White v. State
| Decision Date | 27 April 1939 |
| Docket Number | 4 Div. 46. |
| Citation | 237 Ala. 610,188 So. 388 |
| Parties | WHITE v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Pike County; W. L. Parks, Judge.
Charles (alias C. W., alias Herbert Wm., alias James) White was convicted of rape, and he appeals.
Affirmed.
Yarbrough & Beck, of Enterprise, for appellant.
Thos S. Lawson, Atty. Gen., and Wm. H. Loeb, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The appellant was convicted of the offense of "forcibly ravishing Elizabeth Liger," a white woman, and was sentenced to suffer death by electrocution.
The appellant is of the negro race and the evidence offered by the State goes to show that said Elizabeth Liger is a paralytic, twenty years of age, with the mental development of a child from eight to twelve years, and obsessed with a mania to have her fortune told. That appellant, a day or so before the commission of the alleged offense, came to Troy procured a room at the home of Mary Etta Gray, also of negro race, fitted the room up for an office where he held himself out as a fortune teller. That with the aid and connivance of said Mary Etta Gray, appellant allured his alleged victim into said room and forcibly ravished her.
The appellant's testimony was a total disavowal of the alleged crime, but shows that Miss Liger visited his alleged office on two or more occasions, and paid him money to answer questions, and subsequently to "give her a full reading," as he termed it.
The evidence presented a case for the jury on all the elements of the alleged offense, including the mental capacity of the alleged victim to consent to sexual intercourse.
The State's witness, Miss Liger, testified fully both on her examination in chief and on cross-examination to the details of the alleged occurrence, and dealings with the appellant in said room, and the court did not err in sustaining the solicitor's objections to the question asked by defendant's counsel on cross-examination: "I will ask you again if this isn't a fact that this negro was polite and courteous to you all the time that you were there?" The question indicates on its face that it is a mere repetition and it called for a conclusion which it was the province of the jury to draw.
The witness, Miss Liger, on her examination in chief, after detailing the circumstances occurring while she was in the room with the defendant, without objection to the question testified:
This testimony was properly admitted as tending to show complaint, and moreover, was of the res gestæ of the main fact--the alleged rape. Griffin v. State, 76 Ala. 29; Mickle v. State, 226 Ala. 616, 148 So. 319.
On cross-examination of the witness, the defendant brought out the following details of the conversation:
In response to the solicitor's question, on redirect examination: "Now what else, if anything, did Mary Etta say to you on Tuesday evening just as you were leaving there?" The witness testified:
This was permissible after the defendant had brought out the details of the complaint. Griffin v. State, supra.
The evidence shows that the medical witnesses, Doctors Sanders, Bowdoin and Stewart, had been engaged in the active general practice of medicine for several years, and had more or less experience in diagnosing and treating mental diseases; that they were personally acquainted with the alleged victim and had frequent opportunities to observe her physical and mental condition and Dr. Sanders had participated with Dr. Stewart in making a physical examination.
Such medical witnesses, as has been repeatedly held, were competent to give their professional opinion as to the physical condition and...
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