State v. Watson

• Decision Date: 15 December 1978
• Docket Number: No. 12414,12414
• Citation: State v. Watson, 99 Idaho 694, 587 P.2d 835 (Idaho 1978)
• Parties: The STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Robert James WATSON, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 835

587 P.2d 835

99 Idaho 694

The STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Robert James WATSON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 12414.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

Dec. 15, 1978.

Jeff Stoker of Rayborn, Rayborn & Ronayne, Twin Falls, for defendant and appellant.

Wayne L. Kidwell, Atty. Gen., Lynn E. Thomas, Deputy Atty. Gen., Susan P. Mauk, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boise, for plaintiff and respondent.

BISTLINE, Justice.

Defendant appellant Watson was arrested in Nevada and extradited to Idaho to stand trial on separate charges of rape, grand larceny and burglary, the latter two of which arose out of separate incidents unrelated to the rape. A preliminary hearing was held on the rape charge and Watson was bound over to district court where he was tried before a jury on August 4 and 5, 1976. A conviction resulted.

Prior to sentencing on the rape conviction, he received preliminary hearings on the burglary and grand larceny charges, following which informations were filed. He pled guilty to each. He was sentenced to 10 years on the larceny charge and 10 years on the burglary charge, the two to run consecutively. He was sentenced to 20 years on the rape conviction which sentence was to run concurrently with the other two. He appeals all three convictions.

I.

Defendant first argues that this rape conviction should be reversed because the magistrate failed to make a probable cause determination at the time the arrest warrant was issued. ¹ This assignment is without merit. While a suspect's arrest and pretrial detention, not based on the probable cause finding of a neutral and detached magistrate, is impermissible under the provisions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article 1 § 17 of the Idaho Constitution, the United States Supreme Court has held, as to the federal constitutional provisions, that a conviction will not be vacated on the ground that the defendant was detained pending trial without determination of probable cause. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). Prior to Gerstein, in State v. Poynter, 70 Idaho 438, 220 P.2d 386 (1950), the same question was raised and decided adversely to Watson's challenge:

Appellant further contends that at the time of the arrest he was taken to jail and confined without any warrant of arrest, or for any crime that had been committed in the presence of any officer, and that such arrest was illegal and void, and therefore by innuendo he could not be prosecuted. Where the accused is personally before the court, the jurisdiction of the court to try him is not impaired by the manner in which he is brought before the court.

The remedy of the appellant, if any, does not go to the limits of the prosecution, and has no bearing on the question of whether he is guilty or innocent, and such illegal arrest, if it was, is no reason why he should not answer the charge against him when brought before a tribunal having jurisdiction. The manner of arrest is not cause for exemption from prosecution and it follows that he is not wronged by being subjected to the jurisdiction, even if his detention in the first instance was unlawful.

Id. at 443, 220 P.2d at 390. We hold that reasoning applicable to the provisions of the Idaho Constitution. "The distinction between a pre-trial declaration of a right to a hearing and a post-conviction appeal for reversal on the basis of the absence of such hearing is a pragmatic and sensible distinction." Pugh v. Rainwater, 483 F.2d 778, 787 (5th Cir. 1973). Where an arrest warrant has been issued without a magistrate's finding of probable cause, the illegality of such an arrest, while providing grounds in habeas corpus proceedings and perhaps for asking application of the exclusionary rule as to confessions or evidence obtained in search pursuant to arrest does not invalidate a conviction which results from a fair trial of the issue of guilt. We point out also that an arrest is not required as an integral part of a criminal accusation and trial. Rather, it serves to insure the presence of the accused at the proceedings which name him as a violator and to insure his presence afterward to accept the judgment of the court if he is found guilty.

Moreover, Watson received a preliminary hearing on the rape charge only 7 or 8 days later at which adversary proceeding a judicial determination was made that the crime of rape had been committed, and that there was sufficient cause to believe Watson to have been the perpetrator. Even if Watson's version of the proceedings on the issuance of the rape warrant were accepted, he was at best detained illegally only until the preliminary hearing, during which time he raised no challenge by habeas corpus proceedings and was also properly detained on "holds" from other states on other charges.

II.

Trial testimony which the jury heard on the State's presentation, and was at liberty to believe, gives us these facts. The prosecutrix, an 18-year-old married woman of Twin Falls, left her house at 7:10 p. m. on April 19, 1976, to take supper to her husband at his job. En route a white pickup passed her, its driver signalling that something was wrong with a tire on her car. After she halted, the driver of the pickup pulled up in front of her, stopped his vehicle and got out. After inspecting the tire, he opened her car door, knife in hand, and told her to slide over and do as she was told lest she get hurt. He got into her car and drove to a secluded canyon. She got out and started running but Watson, identified by her as the pickup driver, caught her, carried her back to the car and there forced her to have sexual intercourse with him. He then drove back to the highway and got into his pickup. She drove to her husband's place of employment and arrived there very visibly upset. After telling her husband, the two proceeded to the sheriff's office to report the alleged rape. A medical examination was performed on her soon after by her family doctor. Watson's version of the incident was that he stopped to assist the prosecutrix who was standing by her car at the roadside. At her request that he check the car for a clunking noise, he drove them around on an inspection trip, during which he thought she appeared receptive to his advances and consented to sexual intercourse with him.

At the conclusion of the State's case and before taking the stand, Watson moved for directed acquittal on the grounds that the prosecution had presented no corroboration of the prosecutrix's testimony identifying him as her attacker. ² The trial court denied the motion and defendant assigns this denial as error.

The assignment of error lacks merit. Watson's own testimony supplied any evidentiary deficiency in failing to sufficiently identify him as the assailant. The general rule is that on denial of a motion for directed verdict, any deficiency in the plaintiff's case may be supplied by evidence then put on by the defendant, if the defendant declines to stand on his motion and proceeds with his case. The defendant is, of course, not obliged to present any case. Here he did, and on his admitting the sexual intercourse, the issue was narrowed down to whether the sexual intercourse was consensual on the part of the prosecutrix, or forcible as alleged and testified by her. We note also that the defendant did not renew his motion at the close of the entire case. Had he done so,

The rule is settled that when a defendant introduces evidence, he waives any objection to the denial of his motion to acquit at the close of the government's case. United States v. Calderon, 384 (348) U.S. 160, 164, n. 1, 75 S.Ct. 186, 99 L.Ed. 202 (1954); United States v. Ambrose, 483 F.2d 742 (6th Cir. 1973). The defendant may renew his motion at the close of all the proof, as the defendant did here, but the court will then consider the sufficiency of the evidence on the record as a whole and not the sufficiency of the government's case in chief. United States v. Ambrose, supra; Cline v. United States, 395 F.2d 138 (8th Cir. 1968). It is not necessary, therefore, to determine the sufficiency of the evidence at the close of the government's case in chief since the defendant presented evidence and thus waived objection to the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal made at that time.

United States v. Black, 525 F.2d 668, 669 (6th Cir. 1975). Similarly, the Supreme Court of Oregon held:

If a defendant elects not to stand on his motion and presents evidence in his defense, the appellate court must consider all the evidence and if it is sufficient to sustain the conviction, the defendant cannot complain that his motion for acquittal made at the close of the state's case was denied.

State v. Gardner, 231 Or. 193, 372 P.2d 783, 784 (1962).

III.

A more perplexing assignment of error is that the trial court should not have allowed the prosecutrix to testify before the jury that she was at that time pregnant, the trial taking place some 4 months after her encounter with Watson. No contention was advanced at trial, or here, that her pregnancy resulted from intercourse with Watson, nor was the testimony offered to prove that such did happen. The prosecutor satisfied the trial court that such evidence was germane as explaining why she had quit work, being thus "relevant to her character." We are not persuaded; and we see that evidence, in what was otherwise a fair and well-presented trial, as far-fetched and irrelevant. Although the State argues that it could not have prejudiced Watson, we disagree. Obviously it would be especially so where the State did not further pursue the cause of pregnancy, leaving that to the speculation of a jury's imagination. Where the pregnancy evidence was brought out prior to Watson's admission of intercourse, and Had it been offered for the purpose of proving intercourse, such evidence should have been rejected on the strength of what the court said in State v. Wilson, 93 Idaho...