Opinion ID: 1942822
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: The defendant's conviction rests ultimately upon the victim's testimony that [h]e [meaning the defendant Samson] put his hands on my pants. (Underscoring ours). In State v. Rand, 156 Me. 81, 161 A.2d 852 (1960), where the defendant was under indictment for criminal assault and battery and the evidence was that the defendant had put his hands on the outside of her clothing on her private parts, this Court said in dictum: Although the acts proven may not constitute an offense under the indecent liberties statute . . . it does not follow that they do not constitute an assault and battery. (Emphasis added) This dictum has been viewed as the law of Maine by the drafters of our recent Maine Criminal Code. See 1977 Pamphlet, relating to Title 17-A, at pages 74 and 80. Notwithstandingly, it is our present duty to declare, whether under 17 M.R.S.A., § 1951 (as the statute appeared at the time of this alleged offense) the crime of indecent liberties was consummated by the touching of the young female's sexual parts or organs from the outside of her clothing, or was it necessary to constitute a violation of the Act that there must be a skin to skin contact? In Miles v. State, 157 Tex.Cr.R. 188, 247 S.W.2d 898 (1952), the Texas Court noticed that the statute involved, like our own, broadly denounced the placing of a hand upon or against the sexual part of a male or female under the age of fourteen (14) years and that nothing in the statute suggested that the crime could be committed only by the application of the bare hand of the accused to the bare or naked sexual part of the child. That Court concluded it could not, under the guise of statutory construction, write into the statute a limitation not contained therein. In State v. Reich, 186 Neb. 289, 183 N.W.2d 223 (1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 846, 92 S.Ct. 149, 30 L.Ed.2d 83, the Nebraska Court, in dealing with an analogous statute, reached the same conclusion, expressing its supporting rationale in manner as follows: The defendant asks us to read into the statute a meaning and a requirement that the massaging and the fondling referred to in the statute requires that it be on the naked body of the victim of the offense. While penal statutes must be construed strictly, it is not proper to give them a strained or an unnatural construction. They should be construed so as to give effect to the plain meaning of the words employed, and where of doubtful meaning, or application, the court should adopt the sense that best harmonizes with the context and the apparent policy and objects of the Legislature, [citation omitted]. It is apparent that the statute was not intended to protect only unclothed small girls or permit the accomplishment of the act[s] sought to be prohibited by the statute as long as they were performed on a clothed girl victim. We agree. We cannot believe that our Legislators intended that a piece of clothing, as flimsy and truth-revealing as a female's panties in the instant case, would insulate a child molester from the reach of our indecent liberties statute. The legislative intent was to protect children against the perpetration of sexual indignities to their person in a manner abhorrent to society and to save them from being subjected to iniquitous conduct having a tendency to produce serious emotional and psychological impact on such minors who, because of their tender age, are deemed incapable of protecting themselves. The statutory purpose would be frustrated to a very substantial degree if the only prohibited indecent contact had to be of the flesh-to-flesh variety. [3] To the same effect, see People v. Keesee, 47 Ill.App.3d 637, 7 Ill.Dec. 768, 365 N.E.2d 53, 57 (1977); State v. Kocher, 112 Mont. 511, 119 P.2d 35 (1941); People v. Halistik, 69 Cal.App. 174, 230 P. 972 (1924). We conclude that the defendant's motion for acquittal was properly denied.