Doyal v. State

Per Curiam. A few days after she had signed out of a mental institution, a woman to whom neither nature nor fate had been kind found what she thought to be a haven in a rooming house in Baltimore run by the appellant. On her second day in the house she was in bed in the small room she had been given when, she said, appellant entered, sat on her bed and over her protests, kissed her. In an attempt to thwart his advances, she asked him to get her a cup of coffee.

He did so and then refused her demand that he leave the room, and renewed his advances. She leapt from bed in an effort to escape. He locked the door, threw her back on the bed and forcibly raped her. After he left, she clothed herself and ran into the room of another boarder seeking aid, but was told to get out.

She went to a corner drug store, where, unable to speak from shock, she wrote a note stating “I have just been raped by a man called Reds * * * I have just been raped by a boy.” Appellant’s nickname is Reds. The police were sum ³³ moned and, because the victim was crying, nervous and unable to speak, ascertained from another that Reds was in a nearby tavern where he had been drinking off and on all day, and arrested him. The appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict in that the verdict rested solely on the uncorroborated testimony of the victim, who was an unreliable and untrustworthy witness, as to whom the examining psychiatrist had said: “* * * there is serious doubt as to the patient’s credibility in a rape charge. Certainly her testimony will have to be perceived with an unusual degree of circumspection.” The trial judge gave thoughtful and deliberate consideration to whether the victim had been raped—there could have been no doubt there had been sexual intercourse — and to whether the appellant was the attacker.

He rejected as incredible the exculpatory testimony of the appellant and his witnesses, most of whom