Court Opinion

ID: 9774301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:14:17.67106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:05.141835
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
concurring.
There is no direct evidence that the defendant had the knife at the time of the rape. The prosecutrix did not see or feel a knife or claim that defendant said he had a knife. Defendant had one hand in his right hand coat pocket (which might have been to keep his hand warm — it was eight degree below freezing — or it might have been that defendant wanted the prosecutrix to believe he had some sort of weapon concealed in his coat pocket), but the first time anyone saw a knife in the possession of the defendant was an hour later at a different location, under entirely different and innocent circumstances and surroundings, when he was arrested and a knife was found in his left front pants pocket. In my opinion, this affords no basis whatever for inferring that defendant had this knife with him during the rape occurring at an earlier time at a different place.
*246The prosecutrix said defendant said if she did not submit, he would hurt her. But this is no evidence that defendant had a knife or any other weapon. Being a male and bigger and stronger than prosecutrix, there were many ways defendant could have hurt her without using a knife. The best that can be said about the evidence in this case as establishing that defendant had the knife at the time of the rape, even if everything the prosecutrix said is accepted as true, is that such a conclusion is rank speculation, resting on inferences which are no more than possibilities, and is far short of being sufficient to support a verdict of guilty. The evidence is equivocal — it points nowhere with any degree of probability, like a bobbing compass, not susceptible of a definite reading. The presumption of innocence is reduced to empty rhetoric if all the state need show to convict is that the defendant might have had a weapon on his person at the time of the rape. If the weapons conviction had to rest on its having taken place at the .time of the rape, I would dissent. The insufficiency of the evidence on this aspect of the case is even more apparent when it is contrasted with the evidence supporting the conviction of carrying a concealed weapon at the time of the arrest.
As to the situation when arrested, unquestionably defendant did have the knife in his left front pants pocket, out of sight, at this particular time. When the jury heard this evidence, therefore, they were not asked to speculate as to the fact of possession or to base its existence on a possibility. They had substantial evidence before them on which to draw their conclusion. Given this solid premise, the argument can then be made that since defendant had committed the crime of rape (or so this same jury found), he had the weapon by the time he was arrested for the purpose of using it to resist arrest or against prose-cutrix’s relatives bent on revenge. On this basis, therefore, I concur in affirmance.