Legore v. State

The appellant was indicted and convicted in the Circuit Court for Carroll County for an assault with intent to rape a certain woman and also for a common assault upon her. At the trial the prosecutrix testified that upon one occasion the prisoner had made an indecent proposal to her and that upon a subsequent occasion he had attempted to assault her, and that she did not tell anyone how he had acted upon either of these occasions. The State’s Attorney then asked her: “Why did you not tell anyone what Legore had done?” The trial Court overruled the appellant’s objection to this question and allowed it to be answered, and the prisoner excepted. The Court said: “ It is obvious that the question applies as well to the assault as to the prior indecent proposal.

Its scope is to inquire of the witness not only ⁷³⁶ why she had not told anyone of the assault, but also why she had been silent as to the indecent proposal. If the evidence of such proposal, as and at the time it was offered, was not proper proof to go to the jury in support of the charge laid in the indictment, it certainly requires no argument to show that the fact of her having told it or not, or the reason why she had or had not told it, ought not to have been permitted to be shown. On what principle was it competent for the State, at that stage of the trial, to show a prior indecent proposal ? The rule that in certain cases similar prior acts of the prisoner may be shown is founded upon the idea that such acts tend to throw light on the intent of the prisoner.

The assault charged in the indictment being proven, the fact that the prisoner has made similar attempts, explains or tends to explain the purpose and intent with which the assault for which he is being tried was committed. But an indecent proposal is not an assault and can furnish no evidence of a purpose to accomplish an object by force. We have been referred to no case and know of none, where the rule allowing prior attempts to be shown, has ever been extended so far. The evidence of the prior proposal, we are of opinion, was foreign to the subject of inquiry, and if this be so the question should not have been allowed. “ The second and third exceptions present the same question.

The alleged assault, the evidence shows, was committed on the morning of Friday, the thirteenth day of August. The posecutrix testified she told no one about it, until in the evening or night of the same day, when her husband came home and she told him. Both exceptions raise the objection that it was not proper to show that she then made a complaint to him of the prisoner’s conduct towards her. The witness did not undertake to narrate what she told her husband, all that she or her husband testified to was that on his return to his home, she complained to him of the prisoner’s assault on her.

It is not questioned that if the complaint had been made 1 ‘ immediately or recently after the act if opportunity afforded,” the evidence would have been properly admitted, but it is contended that ⁷³⁷ it was made too late and after opportunity to make the complaint to others. Ordinarily the unsworn statements of a witness cannot be admitted to corroborate what he has testified to on oath. But in cases of rape there is an exception, founded on the principle that when an outrage has-been committed on a woman, the instincts of her nature-prompt her to make her