State v. Waters
| Decision Date | 11 December 1906 |
| Citation | 109 N.W. 1013,132 Iowa 481 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, v. CHAS. E. WATERS, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Cass District Court.-- HON. W. R. GREEN, Judge.
THE defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him of rape.
Affirmed.
Follett & Curtis, for appellant.
Chas W. Mullan, Attorney-General, and Lawrence De Graff, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.
The accused was convicted of having had sexual intercourse with his cousin, Bernice Sewell, a girl but little over fourteen years of age, under a statute declaring it rape so to do with a female under the age of fifteen years. She testified that in the latter part of February, 1905, the accused, who was sleeping in an adjoining room, came to her bed where the act occurred, and that this happened repeatedly thereafter, the last time in June following. All of this was explicitly denied by the accused.
That the prosecutrix had intercourse with some one is fully established by the evidence, and the point most relied upon for a reversal is the alleged insufficiency of the corroborating evidence. If this tended to identify and single out defendant as the perpetrator of the crime, it was of that character contemplated by the statute, and its sufficiency would be for the determination of the jury. State v. Baker, 106 Iowa 99, 76 N.W. 509; State v. Norris, 122 Iowa 154, 97 N.W. 999; State v Smith, 124 Iowa 323.
The girl resided with her father and mother, who had nine children besides, and lived in a two-story house, extending east and west, with a wing to the south. The stairway to the second story was on the west side of the wing and to a landing which was part of the south room. From this room a door opened into the west room of the main part and another into the east room thereof, so that one going upstairs necessarily entered the south room, as a person would also in passing from one room to the other in the main part. Three of her brothers, aged twenty-one, nineteen, and eighteen years respectively, slept in the west room. During February and March Bernice, with a sister seven years of age, slept in the south room, and her sister, two years older, with another little girl in the east room. In April the bed of Bernice was moved to the east room, where she slept thereafter. The defendant, who was twenty-seven years of age, had been a frequent visitor at the Sewell home for several years, eating with the family when there, and frequently staying several days at a time. Mrs. Sewell testified that he paid much attention to Bernice; that they were together so much that she called her away several times and cautioned her to...
To continue reading
Request your trial