State v. Whitley
| Decision Date | 17 April 1906 |
| Citation | 53 S.E. 820,141 N.C. 823 |
| Parties | STATE v. WHITLEY. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from Superior Court, Stanly County; Councill, Judge.
C. D Whitley was convicted of seduction under promise of marriage and appeals. Affirmed.
The indictment alleged that on a designated day defendant did with force and arms at and in a certain county unlawfully willfully, and feloniously seduce one Flora C. Eudy, an innocent and virtuous woman, under promise of marriage to the said Flora C. Eudy, made by him, the said Devotion Whitley against the form of the statute, and the peace and dignity of the state. Defendant moved in arrest of judgment on the ground that the indictment did not allege a marriage contract because the allegation following the statement that the seduction was under a promise of marriage reduced the effect of the allegation as to promise to a mere proposition on the part of one of the parties. On trial the mother of prosecutrix was allowed to testify that after she discovered her daughter to be pregnant the daughter had told her that defendant had promised to marry her and that she loved him. On cross-examination of one of the witnesses for the state the defendant's counsel asked the witness if he had not heard a report in the community that prosecutrix would permit young men to take indecent liberties with her. The question was excluded, and defendant excepted.
R. L. Smith, Adams, Jerome & Armfield, and J. R. Price, for appellant.
The Attorney General, for the State.
The indictment follows the exact words of the statute. Revisal 1905, § 3354. The added words are mere surplusage and do not affect the bill. Revisal 1905, § 3254, forbids the arrest of judgment "by reason of any informality or refinement." In State v. Ferguson, 107 N.C. 850, 12 S.E. 574, the court says: "The crime does not consist in the sexual intercourse nor in the seduction nor in the innocence and virtue of the woman, but in committing the act under promise of marriage, without which no crime is created by the statute, and which alone makes the seduction criminal." It was clearly competent for the prosecutrix to testify under what inducement and circumstances she yielded to the defendant, the truth of her statement being a matter for the jury.
The statements made by the prosecutrix to her mother were competent to corroborate her testimony on the trial. As to the fourth and fifth exceptions, the witness had not testified as to the general character of the prosecutrix, and it was not competent to ask him (unless perhaps on cross-examination, if he had been such character witness) whether there was not a report in the neighborhood derogatory to her character. If she were not a virtuous and innocent woman, that fact could not be shown by hearsay, by a mere report that she had permitted, on a certain occasion familiarities to be taken with her person, not amounting...
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