Terry v. State
| Decision Date | 06 June 1910 |
| Docket Number | 14516 |
| Citation | 52 So. 483,97 Miss. 472 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | CHESTER TERRY v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI |
FROM the circuit court of Harrison county, HON. THOMAS H. BARRETT Judge.
Terry appellant, was indicted and tried for and convicted of seduction and appealed to the supreme court. The case is sufficiently stated in the opinion of the court.
Affirmed.
Ford White & Ford and J. H. Mize, for appellant.
The court erred in overruling appellant's demurrer to the indictment. An indictment must allege that at the time of sexual intercourse which constituted the crime of seduction the female was then and there of previous chaste character; that she was at the very time of the act of intercourse of previous chaste character. The indictment should have alleged that Hilda Ryan was then and there at the time of the intercourse of previous chaste character.
The indictment is not sufficient in alleging that she was a female child under the age of eighteen years and of previous chaste character. She might have been of previous chaste character, yet this would satisfy the indictment because being fourteen years, or twelve for that matter, would make her a female child under the age of eighteen years of previous chaste character. There was never a harlot, however low she may have been, who was not at some time a female of previous chaste character. State v. Gates, 27 Minn. 52, 6 N.W. 404.
In Norton v. State, 72 Miss. 128, it is held that in order to convict one of seduction the female must be of chaste character at the time of the intercourse.
It is true that Code 1906, § 1438, provides that indictments for any offense shall not be insufficient for omitting to state the time, where the time is not of the essence of the offense. This section is not applicable here for time is of the essence of the offense and the essence of the offense is something without which that would be no offense. Hardmott v. State, 66 Miss. 26.
James R. McDowell, assistant attorney-general, appellee.
Could the defendant possibly misunderstand the charge upon which he was to be tried? The statute is followed almost literally and when it is charged that defendant then and there seduced, etc., the prosecutrix, a female child under the age of eighteen years, and of previous chaste character, it can mean nothing but that at the time of said seduction she was a female child under the age of eighteen years and of previous chaste character. Defendant argues that it might possibly be inferred that at some time prior to the time she was eighteen she might have been of previous chaste character, though at the very moment of her seduction she might have lost her virtue and lacked chastity. Such a strained construction would do violence not only to the statute itself, but to its enforcement. The crime is to be charged in plain, unambiguous terms, and to say that this indictment could reasonably mean that the prosecutrix here was of previous chaste character at fourteen, and a common harlot for the next two years, up until the time she was seduced, would be stretching its construction far beyond the limits of reason.
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King v. State
...statute must be of such character as will fairly tend to connect the appellant with the commission of the offense. In the case of Terry v. State, 52 So. 483, this court "our statutes provide that she must not only be of previous chaste character, but that the testimony of the female seduced......
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