Opinion ID: 1599703
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: # 4. Whether the trial court erred by allowing Dr. Whites to testify for the State?

Text: Although not clearly argued in his brief, appellant's argument is probably best expressed in his final sentence on the matter which reads: [t]he testimony of Dr. Whites places the act on the father of the child, (said father did on a subsequent day in the Circuit Court of George County, Mississippi, ple[a]d guilty to the charge of rape on the person of C.A. [sic]). Simmons v. State, 61 So. 826 [Miss. 1913]. The record reveals C.A. was brought to the hospital on the day Dr. Whites examined her by Mrs. Shirley Roberts, a social worker with the Welfare Department, because of the story that she alleged. On direct examination, immediately after establishing that C.A. had told Dr. Whites for purposes of medical diagnosis and treatment that she had had intercourse at least ten times, the following exchange ensued: Q. Okay. Did she tell you who this person was as part of the medical history? A. My medical history relates that it was her father. BY MR. BAILEY: May it please the Court, that would be hearsay. We are going to object to the names of any persons. He can tell what he saw. BY MR. HOLLIMAN: Q. I will rephrase it. I will strike that. What kind of examination did you perform on C.A. [sic], Dr. Whites? A. I checked her female organs. I did a pelvic examination. As evidenced above, the question asked by the prosecutor as to who this person was who had had intercourse with C.A. was objected to by the defense and was withdrawn by the prosecutor. The question having been withdrawn and the defense not having requested any further action by the trial court, appellee contends there was nothing for the trial court to rule upon and, therefore, no ground for assignment of error. Furthermore, appellee argues that there is no basis for any showing that this question and Dr. Whites' answer could have resulted in any prejudice to appellant, since Dr. Whites did not testify that C.A. said anything to him at all concerning appellant. Dr. Whites' testimony was helpful to the triers of fact in that he explained the following: how to perform a vaginal examination; what condition to expect a 10-year-old female's vaginal cavity to be; that C.A.'s vaginal cavity was not normal; that, while masturbation with a foreign object such as a coke bottle could cause the large vaginal opening he found in C.A.'s case, it was his opinion that this process would be almost too painful to initially perform; that he found C.A.'s vaginal cavity to be one that had been entered many times, and that he could not say for certain it was appellant who had done so. Dr. Whites' testimony was relevant and admissible under Rules 401, et seq., M.R.E., in that it tended to make more probable the proposition that this ten-year-old girl had had sexual intercourse with an adult male on more than one occasion. This assignment of error is meritless.