Court Opinion

ID: 9602812
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:00:18.131453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:06.957697
License: Public Domain

BRETT, J.
I concur in the opinion of the Presiding Judge. As was said in Harris v. State, 88 Okla. Cr. 413, 204 P. 2d 310:
*426“This is not as strong a rape case as many we have reviewed * * *. However, the jury heard the witnesses, saw their demeanor on the witness stand and on the disputed questions of fact have held against the accused.”
The Harris ease and the case at bar bear marked similarity. In the Harris case the defendant said, that “many people got killed that way when they didn’t give in when they were supposed to.” Here the victim testified, without objection, “I was afraid that they was going to kill me”. In this case the defendants elected not to testify in their own behalf, and as was said in the Harris case, “the female in stating the occurrence says that she did not consent and did resist until resistance became so useless as to warrant its cessation”. As was said therein, “can this Court after the jury have accepted her version of the transaction and the trial court has approved the verdict, say as a matter of law that there was no competent evidence to sustain the verdict of the jury.” Therein we said, “We think not.” Particularly is this conclusion applicable herein where the defendants did not take the stand in their own behalf and dispute the victim’s testimony. Moreover, the element of fear was greatly enhanced due to the fact that there were two men involved in this situation and not just one. This fact alone supplies an element of force, by numbers. Hence there was both force and fear.
The dissenting opinion sets out the defendants should have been charged in separate informations and tried separately, as each act of sexual intercourse by these two individuals were distinct offenses. This is technically correct, but is a matter that the defendants did not raise in the lower court, and have not raised in any stage of the proceedings, and are not asserting here. Of course, it is a matter that they alone could raise, and their failure so to do amounts to a full and complete waiver. In view of these and other impelling motives, I therefore concur in the opinion of the Presiding Judge.