Court Opinion

ID: 9730019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:57:26.639186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:03.236034
License: Public Domain

Murphy, C. J.,
dissenting:
I agree with the court that the evidence was legally sufficient — indeed it was overwhelming — to establish that appellant was the person who entered the prosecutrix’s home and assaulted her. I cannot, however, agree that the evidence before the trier of fact supported a rational inference from which it could fairly be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that appellant possessed the specific intent necessary to convict for the crime of assault with intent to rape. See Cooper v. State, 220 Md. 183.
An assault with intent to rape is an assault coupled with the intent to commit an act which would constitute the crime of rape, if completed. The essential ingredients of the crime are (a) an assault; (b) an intent to have carnal knowledge of the female and (c) a purpose to carry into effect this intent with force and against the consent of the female. Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, (Anderson Edition), Section 323; 75 C.J.S. Rape, Section 20. As the court correctly points out, the nub of the offense is proof of intent — namely, that it was the purpose and design of this eighty-year old appellant to have intercourse' with the prosecutrix, against her will, by force, and regardless of resistance. I find no such legally sufficient evidence in this case.
*229That a burglar undertakes by force to “neutralize” a female victim who awakes and arises in the course of a burglary does not, of itself, furnish any proof of an intent to rape. That premise conceded, it does not follow that where the victim refuses to be so “neutralized,” and the burglar finds it necessary to overcome the victim’s resistance, that he thereby becomes motivated with a purpose to rape, particularly where, as here, the burglar is eighty years of age.
What followed the initial encounter between the appellant and the prosecutrix was a violent struggle, covering some fifteen minutes in time, the course and intensity of which is well illustrated by the following testimony of the prosecutrix:
“We continued to fight — scuffle. I was able to get hold of a chunk of hair from my attacker’s head; and I began beating his head against the floor. He said, ‘You are hurting my head. If you will let go my hair I will leave you alone.’ I did. And immediately he grabbed my hair and began beating my head against the floor — particularly the left side of my face — which was badly bruised. * * *”
That appellant on one occasion during the struggle emerged sitting on top of prosecutrix as she lay face down on the floor, and pulled at her pajama bottom and at her ankles to restrain her from crawling underneath the bed, does not, in light of the origin, nature and course of the struggle, convert into a sexual attack what had quite plainly become a vindictive purpose on appellant’s part to cause injury to the prosecutrix while overcoming her opposition — a purpose kindled no doubt by the fact that not only had she pounded his head against the floor, but had also yanked out the remaining hair on his head by its very roots.
The court characterizes the struggle as one in which the prosecutrix resisted appellant’s “advances” and states that it is clear that she believed that he intended to attack her carnally. Not once in her testimony, however, did the prosecutrix make any reference to a sexual assault or any act, words or conduct on appellant’s part which to her manifested such a purpose. The court attempts to synthesize the requisite intent to rape by knit*230ting together such factors as a lack of evidence that appellant intended to steal anything; that there was no evidence that he searched any other rooms in the house; that he was silent when in the course of the struggle the prosecutrix offered him money; that appellant, though a seasoned burglar, did not conduct himself in a manner consistent with an intent to steal; that in an effort to trick the prosecutrix out from underneath the bed so that he could rape her, he asked her to call him a taxi and to help him find his hat; and that appellant’s use of artificial hair color demonstrated a propensity, in his advanced years, toward commission of sexual acts.
To conclude on the basis of the aforegoing evidence that the appellant’s intent was to rape the prosecutrix cannot, in my judgment, be justified by any rational inference-drawing process. Considering all the circumstances of the case, not the least of which is that appellant was eighty years of age at the time of the crime, convinces me that appellant’s actions and conduct were too equivocal and too enigmatical to mount up to any legally sufficient evidence of proof of an intent to rape.