Case ID: pr_24/html/0209-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice del Toro CHIEF JUSTICE HERNANDEZ AND JUSTICE ALDREY.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

People, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Martínez, Defendant and Appellant.
    Appeal from the District Court of San Juan, Section 2, in a Prosecution for Rape.
    No. 953.
    Decided June 24, 1916.
    Rape — Information.—Every information charging rape must allege that the victim is not the wife of the accused, for this is an essential element of the offense.
    The facts are stated in the opinion.
    
      Mr. Enrique Campillo for the appellant.
    
      Mr. Salvador Mestre, fiscal, for the appellee.
   Mr. Justice del Toro

delivered the opinion of the court’

The information in this case, in so far as pertinent, reads as follows:

“On or about March 29, 1915, the said Mariano Martínez Arezo wilfully and maliciously had carnal knowledge of Maria Beltran, a girl under fourteen years of age, in Santuree, which forms part of the Judicial District of San Juan.”

The case went to trial and the defendant was convicted and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for the crime of attempted rape. He moved for a new trial on the ground that several errors had been committed and his motion was overruled. Thereupon he appealed to this court from the order refusing a new trial and from the judgment.

'We are unable to consider some of the alleged errors because no statement of the case lias been filed and the others are unimportant, but after examining the information we rare constrained to reverse the judgment appealed from, because, in accordance with the principles laid down in the recent ease of People v. Cortés, we are forced to the conclusion that the information in the present case failed to set up one of the essential elements of the crime charged, namety, that the victim was not the wife of the accused.

Therefore, the judgment should be reversed and the case dismissed without prejudice to further action in accordance with law.

Reversed without prejudice.

Justices Wolf and Hutchison concurred.

Chief Justice Hernandez and Justice Aldrey dissented.

DISSENTING OPINION OP

CHIEF JUSTICE HERNANDEZ AND JUSTICE ALDREY.

For the same reasons stated in the dissenting opinion delivered this day in Case No. 816, People of Porto Rico v. Pedro Cortés, which we desire to be understood as repeated here, we dissent from the judgment rendered in the present appeal reversing the judgment of the District Court of San Juan, Section 2, of July 7, 1915, and hold that the same should be affirmed.