State v. Tracheal

• Decision Date: 07 February 1911
• Citation: 150 Iowa 135,129 N.W. 736
• Parties: STATE v. TRACHEAL.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

150 Iowa 135

129 N.W. 736

STATE

v.TRACHEAL.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Feb. 7, 1911.

Appeal from District Court, Davis County; Frank W. Eichelberger, Judge.

The defendant and Mrs. Blanche Snoddy were indicted for adultery committed March 2, 1910, the prosecution being instituted by the woman's husband. The prosecution having been dismissed as to Blanche Snoddy, the defendant was put on trial and convicted. From judgment on this conviction, he appeals. Reversed.T. P. Bence, for appellant.

H. W. Byers, Atty. Gen., and Chas. W. Lyon, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

McCLAIN, J.

The evidence for the prosecution tended to show that defendant and Mrs. Blanche Snoddy, who had been the wife of the prosecuting witness for several years, went away together to Kansas about a year before the adultery charged in the indictment was alleged to have been committed, and had adulterous relations with each other; that Mrs. Blanche Snoddy returned to her husband, and was again living with him, when defendant also returned from Kansas, and on the day on which the adultery is charged to have been committed met Mrs. Snoddy on the street corner, and proceeded with her toward the Chautauqua grounds consisting of a wooded tract of land outside the city limits; that a little girl saw them thus going off together, and, no doubt, prompted by the fact that the previous relations of the parties were public property, went with the information to the house of Mrs. Blanche Snoddy's mother-in-law, where Blanche and her husband had been living, and that the mother-in-law with the little girl proceeded into the Chautauqua grounds, where they saw defendant and Blanche sitting on a log across a little hollow at the extreme end of the grounds in the woods, and from a quarter to a half a mile beyond the last house of the town in that direction; that the hollow was wet and muddy, and the log was on higher ground beyond; that as the mother-in-law came near Blanche and defendant she talked with them, without charging any recent improper relations, and that all returned to town, where Blanche's husband, meeting them, accused defendant of taking his wife away from him the preceding summer and now having come back again, the substance of which charge was then denied by the defendant; that there was an interval of between half an hour and an hour between the time when defendant and Blanche were seen going into the Chautauqua grounds and the time when they were found by the mother...