Court Opinion

ID: 9534315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:38:34.019854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:17.240339
License: Public Domain

ROBERT M. BELL, Judge,
concurring.
I concur. I write a separate opinion, however, because while I view the evidence of penetration presented by the State to have been sufficient, it was just barely so. I do not agree that that evidence was clearly sufficient.
The victim testified that the appellant tried to “stick his thing up in my hole”, that she felt pain and that appellant told her “that it wouldn’t go up inside of me”. Further, no definitive answer was ever elicited to the question whether she felt appellant’s penis in her “hole” because that question was asked in conjunction with a second question, *544whether she felt his penis near her “hole”. Her affirmative response to those two questions, therefore, does not supply-clear evidence of penetration. Neither does the presence of acid phosphatase in the victim’s panties and jeans supply the necessary link. Finally, the victim when asked to what she referred when she used the term “hole”, replied my “Susie”. There was no explanation elicited as to which of her bodily openings “Susie” referred. Thus, the evidence from the victim does not support an inference that penetration occurred. See Craig v. State, 214 Md. 546, 136 A.2d 243 (1957).
The evidence which tips the scale in this case is that elicited from the medical witness. The doctor testified that there was a laceration “at the door of the vagina”. I agree that this evidence, coupled with the victim’s testimony as to appellant’s attempt to stick his “thing” in her hole, was sufficient to allow the jury to determine that the essential elements of the crime of second degree rape were proved.
Despite the sufficiency of the evidence in this case, I feel constrained to say again, as we said in Simms v. State, 52 Md.App. 448, 449 A.2d 1196 (1982), that the prosecution did not do in this case all it could have done to prove the offense and yet avoid the sordid details of the incident. With a few simple questions, the prosecution could have rendered this case a clear, rather than a close, one. It would not have involved going into sordid details to have inquired of the victim what she meant by “Susie”; nor would it have been inappropriate to ask the doctor whether the door of the vagina was within the labia majora.
The burden to prove every material element of the offense charged is on the prosecution. That burden must be borne by the prosecution. This court will not relieve it of its burden, even in an egregious case. The prosecution, therefore, should be especially mindful in such cases of its burden and to take great care to meet it.