Case ID: pa-super_95/html/0568-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Keller, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth v. Severa, Appellant.
    
      Argued April 8, 1929.
    Before Trexler, Keller, Linn, Gawthrop, Cunningham and Baldrige, JJ.
    
      Ralph P. Tannehill, for appellant,
    cited: Gordon v. The Director General of Railroads, 268 Pa. 497.
    
      J. E. Kalson, Assistant District Attorney, and with him Samuel H. Gardner, District Attorney, and Ralph C. Davis, for appellee,
    cited: McCollum v. Pittsburgh Railway Co., 51 Pa. Superior Ct. 637; Miller v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co., 58 Pa. Superior Ct. 558; Commonwealth v. Sutton, 51 Pa. Superior Ct. 191; Corrigan v. Traction Co., 225 Pa. 560; Commonwealth v. Levine, 74 Pa. Superior Ct. 491.
    April 15, 1929:
   Opinion by

Keller, J.,

Appellant was convicted of fornication and bastardy. He offered no evidence on the trial, taking the position that the testimony of the Commonwealth’s witness, Mary Holewinski, with respect to the alleged act or acts of fornication, was so contradictory as to be insufficient and incompetent to sustain a verdict of guilty.

The girl was of low mentality, uneducated and bad had little schooling. She was easily confused and under the cross-examination of defendant’s counsel made answers, which if she understood the questions, were inconsistent with the defendant’s guilt; but the sympathetic and tactful examination by the court which followed apparently reassured the witness and thereafter there was no uncertainty or contradiction in her testimony.

We agree with the learned court below that the case was for the jury.

The assignments of error are overruled. The judgment is affirmed, and it is ordered that the appellant, Joseph L. Severa, appear in the court below at such time as he may be there called and that he be by that court committed until he has complied with the sentence, or any part of it, which had not been performed at the time the appeal in this case was made a supersedeas.