Court Opinion

ID: 9553341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:28:15.690999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:30:51.527828
License: Public Domain

HATHAWAY, Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Appellant’s midnight incursion into his victim’s one-room, efficiency-type home, where she was alone with her four-year-old son, and the ensuing two-and-one-half-hour ordeal of assault and sexual attack, including rubbing his penis on his victim’s buttocks — desiring entry “from the rear” 1 —in my opinion, supports one count of the conviction of unnatural lewd and lascivious acts. The majority maintains that the prosecution did not elaborate on the attempted sodomy at trial. It seems apparent that the phraseology used by the victim at trial, as well as her intonation and expressions which we cannot appreciate on appeal, must have been so expressive as to preclude the necessity for elaboration and left no doubt in the jury’s mind that sodomy was contemplated. This view is further borne out by appellant’s declining to even challenge the sufficiency of the evidence.
Appellant’s forced advances aimed at sodomy, A.R.S. § 13-651 (as amended 1965), conducted in the same room occupied by the victim’s four-year-old son, and despite her pleas, crying and resistance, could only be considered “natural” conduct in a barbaric, savage society. I am compelled, however, to the conclusion that all reasonable people must agree such dehumanizing, gross indecency is unnatural.
The constitutionality of the statute has been adequately tested for purposes of this appeal in State v. Mortimer, 105 Ariz. 472, 467 P.2d 60 (1970).
I concur in the affirmance of the rape count, but I would also affirm as to the one count of a lewd and lascivious act which centers on the activity described in this dissent and reverse as to the second count involving the splashing of water on the victim’s sexual parts.

. “Q. Carmen, I think you were saying that you were on the floor, and the defendant was taking your panties off? Is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And after he did that, did you say he was rolling you over?
A. Yes. He got on top of me; he tried to penetrate me; then — he couldn’t get an erection. He said it was because he had been drinking. He rolled me over onto my stomaeh; he said something about — he kept rubbing himself—
Q. What do you mean, ‘himself?’
A. Rubbing his penis on my — on my buttocks. He said something to me then about— about wanting to enter me from the rear. I told him, ‘No,’ to please not to do that. He couldn’t get an erection; he wanted me to have oral sex with him. I said, ‘No,’ that I couldn’t do that — ”