Court Opinion

ID: 9764757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:39:06.21352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:01.402979
License: Public Domain

HOOD, Associate Judge
(dissenting).
It is my opinion that this conviction should not stand. Although defendant was charged with an assault, the prosecution developed into one for making an invitation to commit a perverted sexual act. To bolster its case and support the uncorroborated testimony of the officer, the Government was allowed to put in evidence alleged ad • missions by defendant, as the majority opinion states, of prior homosexual acts. To justify the admission of such evidence, the majority opinion relies on cases of incest and rape.
Was there any evidence of an assault? The officer used the word “squeezed,” but a little later in his testimony he said he was “touched” by defendant. It is clear that defendant used no violence and the officer admitted he was not physically hurt. The majority say that physical injury is not essential to an assault and that the injury may be fear, shame and humiliation. Cases involving women and children are cited for this proposition. This officer was neither a woman nor a child. He had been on the police force for seven years and was assigned to the morals division. He did not say or even intimate that he was shocked, shamed, humiliated or even surprised. He was in that neighborhood because “we have been making several cases over there * * I think even under the Government’s theory there was no intention on defendant’s part to injure the officer or his feelings. His belief, or at least hope, was that his action would be favorably received, and nothing in the officer’s testimony supports an inference that such action was repugnant to him. The officer was there for the purpose of receiving an advance of this sort because, as he said, “that is my job.” I think the supposed analogy to cases of women and children completely fails.
The whole purport of the officer’s testimony is that defendant’s action was an invitation, or the preliminary to an invitation, to commit a perverted sexual act. And I think charging defendant with an assault was an attempt to evade the Kelly case where it was ruled that in a prosecution for an invitation to a perverted sexual act-: there must be corroboration.8 I think the true nature of this prosecution is best shown by the words of the prosecuting attorney who, in opposing a motion for judgment of acquittal said:
“There is good reason for the Government to prosecute these cases. All *139the security agencies of the United States immediately fire these people as weak security risks * *
Perhaps defendant is a homosexual; perhaps he had engaged in homosexual acts; perhaps on the night in question he solicited the officer to engage in a homosexual act. He was not charged with any of these things. He was charged with assault and convicted on proof of homosexuality. I would reverse.

. Kelly v. United States, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 125, 194 F.2d 150.