Court Opinion

ID: 9808150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:29:15.4503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:23.705440
License: Public Domain

RodMAN, J.,
dissenting. I cannot concur in the opinion of the majority of the court, and will state the reasons for my dissent with as much brevity as is consistent with clearness.
Upon the authority of State v. Rawls. I admit there was', evidence on which the jury might convict the prisoner of a simple assault.
But in my opinion the record sets forth no evidence fit logo to the jury, or upon which they could reasonably find the prisoner guilty with the intent charged. The intent was are essential ingredient of the offence charged and there was no evidence of it.
In the opinion of the court as delivered by the Chief Justice, the argument is, that because from certain actions of certain brute animals, a certain intent would be inferred, a like intent must be inferred against the prisoner from like acts.
It seems to me that the illustrations are not in point, even if that method of reasoning be allowrable at all. The chicken. *430cock in the ease supposed has no intent of violence. He expects acqniesence and knows lie could not succeed without it, and besides, he is dealing with his lawful wife.
But the method of reasoning is misleading and objectionable on principle. It assumes that the prisoner is a brute, or so like a brute that it is safe to reason from the one to the other ; that he is governed by brutish, and in his case, vicious passions unrestrained by reason or a moral sense. This assumption is unreasonable and unjust. The prisoner is a man, and until conviction at least, he must be presumed to have the passions of a man, and also the reason and moral sense of a man, to act as a restraint on their unlawful gratification. Otherwise he would be non compos mentis, and not, amenable to law. He is entitled to be tried as a man, and to have his acts and intents inquired into and decided upon, by the principles which govern human conduct, and not brutish conduct. Assume as the opinion of the court does, that the inquiry as to his intent is to be conducted upon an analogy from the intents of: brutes, you treat him worse than a brute, because what would not bo vicious or criminal in a brute, is vicious and criminal in him, being a man. When you assume him to ho a brute, you assume him to ho one of vicious properties. If that be true, what need of court and jury The prisoner is not only feres natures but caput lupinmn whom any one may destroy without legal ceremony.
The evidence of the prisoner’s intent is circumstantial; the circumstances being the ■ pursuit, and its abandonment when he got in sight of White’.- house. Itthe admitted rule in such cases that if there be any reasonable hypothesis upon which the circumstances are consistent with the prisoner’s innocence the Judge should direct an acquittal, for in such cases there is no positive proof of guilt. The particular criminal intent charged must be proved. It will not. do to prove that the prisoner had that intent or some other although the other may have been criminal ; and especially if the other, although *431immoral was not criminal. In Rex v. Loyd, 7 Car. P. 318, (32 E. C. L. R.) it was held by Pntternon, Jthat in order to convict of assault with intent to commit a rape, the jury must be satisfied, not only that the prisoner intended to gratify his passions on tho prosecutrix, but that he intended to do so at all events and notwithstanding any resistance on her part. Roscoe Cr. Ev., 811. It is not proof of guilt, merely, that the facts are consistent with guilt, they must be inconsistent with innocence. It is neither charity, nor common sens) nor law, to infer the worst intent which the facts will admit of. The reverse is the rule of justice and law. If the facts will reasonably admit the inference of an intent, which though iin-moral is not criminal, we are bound to infer that intent.
In the present case, may not the intent of the prisoner have been merely to solicit the woman, and to desist, if she resisted, his solicitations ? Or may it not be that he had not anticipated resistance, and would desist in ease it occurred ? Either hypothesis will do, and either is consistent with every fact in evidence ; with the pursuit, and with its abandonment, when the prisoner apprehended discovery. There is absolutely no evidence that the prisoner had formed the intent charged, viz : to know the woman in spite of resistance, and at all hazards.
We are told in the Sacred Book that “ who so looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery in his heart” adultery, not rape. In the minds of men there is a wide space between the immoral intent to seduce a woman, and the criminal intent to ravish her. It is at this point that the inference drawn Ilulu the assumed identity of civilized men, with brutes, is most misleading and unfair. A man may perhaps be easily led by his passions to form the immoral intent to solicit a woman, and to attempt to execute it. But, as a reasoning being, he will pause before he forms tho intent, and attempts to execute it, to commit so hideous and penal a crime as rape; one so certain of detection and punishment. The moral sense which every man has, in a greater or less degree, and the ter*432rors of the law, come in to bold Mm back from the determination to commit the crime, and to make him take a period for deliberation, which, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it must l)e presumed, he availed himself of. Whereas, on the brute, there are no such restraints, as the gratification of his passions is neither a sin or crime. Surely the same rules of evidence cannot apply to beings so different and acting under different moral and legal responsibilities.
The difference in color between the prosecutrix and the prisoner, although it would aggravate the guilt upon the prisoner upon conviction, cannot justly affect the rules of evidence, by which his guilt is to be inquired into. These must be the same for all classes and conditions of men.
It seems to me that the decision of the court is a departure from what I had supposed to be a firmly established rule of evidence for the protection of innocence.
Bynum, J. Concurs in the dissenting opinion of Justice NODMAN.
Pee Cueiam. There is no error.