Court Opinion

ID: 9723451
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:15:35.436452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:48.864450
License: Public Domain

Martin, C. J.
(dissenting). I must respectfully dissent from the decision of the majority in the above matter. They reverse principally for the reason that the testimony had not established a threat beyond a reasonable doubt.
After reading the testimony as set out in the opinion of the majority, it is hard to come to any conclusion but that the victim was for the past number of years in a constant state of dread, inflamed by a guilty conscience, that the defendant would reveal information regarding their association, that it would ruin him and his family socially, that he would lose his job, and suffer all the attendant scorn of his neighbors and friends. This must have had a very startling effect on his mental condition, and it would take little more than the shrug of the shoulders or the inflection of the voice to act as a threat to him and produce just the result that it did — the payment of large sums of money to the defendant. His testimony that the defendant told him he would go to the “proper authorities,” that the victim would be the one to suffer, as he had a police record, that he had better “get the money *439to him by tomorrow night” — all these things, in view of the mental state of the victim, are sufficient to constitute a threat.
What constitutes a threat should not be judged by what would be a threat to the ordinary person but by what is a threat to one in the guilty position of this individual. I feel that the trial court was justified in holding as it did. As to whether or not a threat was proved was, in the first instance, for the trier of the fact.
I am authorized to say that Mr. Justice Currie joins me in this dissent.