1 It is the poli cy of this

court not t

o identif y by name the minor vic tims of se

xual abuse. Instead,

we wil l identify the mino r victim in this case only b y her initials. 

### IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT JACKSON Assigned on Briefs J

une 13, 2001 STATE OF TENNESSEE v. ADRIAN CRANE Direct Appeal from the Criminal Court for Shelby County No. 99-14279 Bernie Weinman, Criminal Court Judge

No. W2000-01892-CCA-R3-CD - Filed August 9, 2001

A Shelby County jury convicted the defendant of rape of a child, a Class A felony. The sole issue in this appeal is the sufficiency of the evidence of unlawful sexual penetration of the victim. We affirm the judgme

nt of the trial cour

t. Tenn. R. App. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment o

f the Criminal Cour

t Affirmed. C ORNELIA A. C LARK , S P
. J., delivered the opinion of the cour

t, in which J OE G. R ILEY and N ORMA M C G EE O GLE , JJ., joined. A. C. Wharton, Distric

t Public Defender

, W. Mark Ward, A

ssistant District Pub

lic Defender, T

eresa Jones, Assistant District Public Defender, Karen Massey, Assistant District Public

Defender, for the appellant, Adrian Crane. Paul G. Summers, Attorne y General, Ange

le M. Gregory, Assistant Attorney General, William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General, Aland

a Horne Dwyer,

Assistant Dis trict Attorney Genera l, Betsy Carnesdale, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee. OPINION On July 7, 1999, Barbara Key, mother of the victim, came

home from work feeling ill. She telephone d the defen dant, a friend of hers, and asked him to drive her to the hospital emergency room. The defendant left Ms. Key at the medical center at about 5:30 p.m., and agreed to keep her five-year-old

son and two-year-old daughter, J.K 1 ., at his house until Ms. Key wa s treat ed and released.-2-

Ms. Key was not released from the medical center until about 1:30 a.m. the next morning. She called the defendant’s home. Her young son answered the phone. Ms. Key hung up a n d telephonedagain. Again her son answered, and talked for about f

ifteen or twenty

minutes. He stated that the defendant wa

s in the bathroom with hi

s sister. The defe

ndant ultimately ca

me to the phone. He then brought

the children to the medical center and drove Ms. Key and the two children to her home. They arriv

ed there about 3:0

0 a.m. As Ms. Key began to prepare her daughter for bed, she observed that the child’s un

derpants were on backwards. Her daughter said the defendant had put them on that way. The next morning, when Ms. Key examined the panties again, she noticed a bloo d stain. She immedia

tely called the medical clinic where her daughter was usually treated and learned that her pediatrician was out of town until the following week. Ms. Key told the receptionist why she was calling. Later the charge nurse returned her ca

ll and advised her to takethe child to another clinic. Upon presentation at that clinic, Ms. Key was advise d to take her daug

hter to LeBo

nheur Childr en’s Medical Center. The two-year-old

was examined the

re and tested for

various diseases . The tests ultimate ly revealed that the child had contracted chlamydia, which is a sexually transmitted disease.
Ms. Key then sought the assistance o f aut horities. Defendant was ultimately indicted for rape of a child.
Ms. Key herself confronted the defendant and asked him what had happened. At first he would not respond, but eventually he did. She testified that

. . . I remember him s

aying that he did

mess with her and I asked him was she crying. He said yes. He went

on to tell me that he w

as having sex with m

y baby and he just let her laid [sic] there and cried. Dr. Amy Hertz, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at LeBonheur, testified that she examinedthe victim

on July 10, 1999. She observed that the victim’s hymen was not torn, but was bruised and irritated. Th e victim had redne

ss and abrasions a

round her labia minora. Dr.

Hertz testified that any kind of direct tra uma would

cause bruising to the hymen. Such bruising could not be caused from

outside trauma. The trauma must have been directed straight up at the hymen. Dr. Hertz further opined that the victim’s injuries were not straddle injuries such as might occur from a fall on a bicycle . She concluded tha t the injurie s susta ined by the victim were recent and were consistent with a sexual assault. Dr. Her tz also tested for

sexually transmitted diseases, and found that the two-year-old victim had contracted chlamydia. Patricia M. Speck, a nurse practitio ner with the Memphi

s Sexual Assault

Resource Center, testified that it is not uncommon for children who have been sexually assaulted not to have evidence of full penetration. Ms. Speck further testified that the diagnosis of chlamydia in a child is “a specific findi ng for contact, mucus membrane to mucus membrane”. Such contact would require separation of the labia and contact with the wet part of the vulva.-3-

Sergeant Larry Matthews of the Memphis PoliceDepartment Child Abuse Squadtestified that he took a statement from the defendant on July 28, 1999. In that statement the defen dan t confes sed to “m olesting” the victim. He admitted “playing” with her vagina with his penis, but deniedplacing his penis inside the victim’s vagina. The defendant acknowledged t ha t he had molested the victim on at

least three separate occasions while babysitting the child at his house and at the victim’s own home. The defendant did not testify at trial. The jury convicted him of rape of a child, a

Class A felony. When an accused cha llenges the suffic

iency of the conv

icting evidence,

the sta nd ard is whether, after reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Questions concerni ng th e credi bility of the witnesses, the weight and value to be given the evidence, as well as all fac tua l issues raised by the evidence, are resolved by the trier of fact, not

this court. State v. Pappas , 754 S.W.2d 620, 623 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1987). Nor may this court reweigh or reevaluate the evidence. State v. Cabbage , 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). A verdict of guilty by the jury, approved by the trial judge, acc

redits the testimon

y of the state’s wi

tnesses and resol

ves a l l conflicts in the testimony in favor of the state. See State v. Cazes , 875 S.W.2d 253, 259 (Tenn. 1994).
Tenn. Code Ann. §39-13-522 defines rape of a child as the unlawful sexual penetration of a person under thirt een years of a ge by the defendant. Tenn. Code Ann. §39-13-501(7) defines “sexual penetration” as “sex ual in tercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, or any other intrusion,

however slight, of

any part of a person’s body or of any object into the genital or anal openings of the victim’s , the defendant’ s, or any other pe rson’s body , but emission of semen is not required” (emphasis added)

. The sole issue in this appeal is defendant’s contention that the evidence is not sufficient to establish his sexual penetration of the victim. In the light most favorable to the state, the defendant himself acknowledged to

Ms. Key that he had

“molested” and ha

d sex wit h h er child. He acknowledged

to a police off

icer that he had rubbed his penis on the victim’s vagina. Medical testimony confirmed that there had been blunt injury trauma to the vagina. Bruising was consistent withat least

slight penetration, even though the hymen was not broken. Further, the two- year-old female tested positive for

chlamydia, which

is a sexually tran

smi t ted disease requiring mucus membrane contact established only by separation of the labia a nd contact with the wet part of the vulva. This court

has noted that, in order

to establish penetration, “it is not necessary that the vagina be injured or that the hymen be ruptured; the entering of the vulva or labia is sufficient”. McDonald v. State , 512 S.W.2d 636, 639 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1974) (citations omitted). The evidence is more than s uff icient for a jury t

o find that the def

endant sexually p

enetrated the vi

ctim. This issue is without merit.-4-

For the foregoing

reasons, we aff

irm the judgment of t

he trial court in a

ll respects.

____________________________________ CORNELIA A. CLARK, SPECIAL JUDGE