Court Opinion

ID: 9777232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:03:25.362491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:50.511401
License: Public Domain

ON APPELLANT’S motion for rehearing
WOODLEY, Judge.
Count one of the indictment, upon which the case was submitted to the jury, alleged that appellant did invite Josefina Cruz, a female under 14 years of age, to enter an automobile being driven by appellant, with lascivious intent and for the purpose of committing an aggravated assault upon said child. We were in error in our original opinion wherein we referred to the offense as “an attempt to persuade” the child. We should have said “inviting a female child under 14 to enter a motor vehicle, etc.”
The case was submitted to the jury under a charge on circumstantial evidence, and the jury was instructed to acquit unless they found beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant had a lascivious intent and intent to commit an aggravated assault upon the child at the time.
The evidence is without dispute that appellant invited the child to enter the automobile he was driving. It is true that he testified that he had no recollection of having invited Josefina Cruz, but he admitted that he had offered rides to school girls in the vicinity of the Tomas Sanchez School and, after being “turned down,” had offered some of them money. But appellant denied that he had any lascivious intent or intent to commit an assault upon any of such children.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, which it is our duty to do in passing upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict, we remain convinced that it is sufficient to support a finding that appellant acted with lascivious intent and intent to commit an assault upon and to pervert and degrade the female child Josefina Cruz. The jury was not bound to accept appellant’s denial of such intent.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.