Court Opinion

ID: 9639892
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:50:57.842848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:22.819808
License: Public Domain

ON appellant’s motion for rehearing
DAVIDSON, Judge.
Appellant asserts, with much earnestness, that this judgment should not be affirmed upon the uncorroborated and unsupported testimony of the prosecutrix.
He insists that the fondling of prosecutrix’ person and sexual parts was such as to require her to make prompt outcry and report thereof, and that her failure to do so requires that her testimony be supported. Branch’s P. C., Sec. 1784.
The rule appears to be that in rape cases wherein the prosecutrix fails to make outcry, when human experience dictates that she do so, the conviction is not substantiated upon the unsupported testimony of the prosecutrix.
Appellant insists that such rule should be applied here, because the indecent fondling of the person and privates of the prosecutrix, to which she testified, was such as to require prompt •outcry on her part, which she failed to make.
If the state’s case, here, rested solely upon an application of the rule stated, a serious question might be presented. But, in addition to the indecent fondling, prosecutrix testified to an assault by the exercise of force and violence on the part of the *607appellant in which her shoulder was bruised and a button torn from her blouse.
It must be remembered that any assault by a male upon the person of a female is and becomes an aggravated assault. The unlawful violence used and the bruises inflicted by appellant were such as to authorize a jury to conclude that an assault had been committed.
It is apparent, therefore, that this conviction does not rest, alone, upon the testimony showing indecent fondling, but is sustainable upon the evidence showing an assault by violence by the appellant upon the prosecutrix.
The judgment of conviction is sustained by that testimony.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.