Lillard v. State

528 S.W.2d 207, 81 A.L.R. 3d 1217, 1975 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 324
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedApril 30, 1975
StatusPublished
Cited by39 cases

This text of 528 S.W.2d 207 (Lillard v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lillard v. State, 528 S.W.2d 207, 81 A.L.R. 3d 1217, 1975 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 324 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1975).

Opinions

OPINION

RUSSELL, Judge.

John Lillard, represented by retained counsel, appeals in error his convictions for two separate rapes committed upon the same victim upon the same night, resulting in two consecutive twenty (20) year penitentiary sentences.

Error is assigned questioning the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury’s verdict. In summarizing the evidence, it is noteworthy that as to the facts of the matter all that we have before us is the composite picture drawn by State’s witnesses, as the defendant did not testify or offer any contrary proof. Counsel’s argument seems mainly to attack what is said to be the harshness of consecutive twenty (20) year sentences.

The State’s proof is that two women, Mary Myers and Bernita Jenkins, were walking on Charlotte Avenue near their homes in Nashville after midnight when the accused, alone in an automobile, stopped and asked directions to a street in another part of town. He represented himself as being a deputy sheriff who had delivered a prisoner to the penitentiary and then gotten lost. The women were unable to give him directions, but when they indicated that they knew the way he offered to return them if they would accompany him and show him the way. They got in the car, and he simply drove on to a rural area in Rutherford County. He told the women that he intended to have them sexually. They asked to be let out of the car and once he let them out, but immediately came back and got them, saying that he’d kill them if they didn’t get back in the car. He claimed that he had a pistol, that he was out on bond for having killed a university professor and that killing them wouldn’t matter; and when he demanded of the first victim that she remove her pants, he told her that if she didn’t comply that he’d use a knife “and she wouldn’t have no trouble getting out of them at all”. He forced Bernita Jenkins onto the back seat and had intercourse with her. Mary Myers was upon the front seat feigning an asthma attack; and she got out of the car, on the pretext of getting more air, and looked for a rock. She found one and handed it to Bernita Jenkins, but apparently it was small and wasn’t used.

Lillard drove to another location and ordered Mary Myers onto the back seat and to disrobe. He was having intercourse with her when Bernita Jenkins dropped a larger rock onto his head, lacerating it. He terminated that rape, caught Bernita Jenkins and with multiple blows knocked her down twice, threatened to kill her by driving the [210]*210car over her, and finally left her lying in the road or ditch as he drove away with Mary Myers. After driving a while Lillard parked at another location, advised Mary Myers that he was going to finish what he had started, and again had sexual intercourse with her. He then drove back to Nashville, where he let Mary Myers out of the car across town from her home.

Bernita Jenkins sounded the alarm by going first to a nearby residence, from whence she was carried to a telephone and then to a meeting with officers. Mary Myers went to her home in Nashville, procured a gun and three male friends, and returned to Rutherford County to try to find Bernita Jenkins and Lillard, whom she intended to execute. Upon being unable to find Bernita Jenkins, Mary Myers also contacted law enforcement officers. The information given by the victims, including the license number of the car, led to the arrest of Lillard, who was positively identified by both women as their assailant.

Only two areas of the evidence represent significant sufficiency questions. The first has to do with resistance to the rapes. Certainly the intercourse was against the wills of the women, but the requirement of force is only met by looking to the whole situation. Lillard never displayed a gun or knife, and apparently did not strike either woman until he was struck upon the head during the second rape. Mary Myers admitted that she did not fight him before either submission. The jury found that, in the total context of this transaction, that justifiable fear of force and violence was present, rendering the rapes “forcible”. The women, at the time of the rapes, were captives under the control of Lillard. His violent response to the one attempt at resistance supports their judgment that it would have been very dangerous, and Mary Myers’ not fighting him cannot reasonably be construed as consent, or as negating the coerced and forcible nature of the acts.

The second question has to do with whether two separate rapes of Mary Myers are supported by the proof. The record is not clear as to exactly how much time elapsed between the intercourse interrupted by the blow to Lillard’s head and the second act of intercourse with Mary Myers. It is clear that he drove away from the first' scene, “around the road and in a field”. How far Lillard drove is not clear. She testified that “[h]e drove the car around some more and then he finally came to this field and there was a gateway there and he drove the car in the gateway and up a little rise”. The second intercourse then occurred.

There apparently is little case law on the subject of whether multiple instances of forcible intercourse compose one crime of rape or several. Plaintiff-in-error does not contend that only one rape of Mary Myers occurred, but argues that the punishments should have been set to run concurrently. Certainly what happened on each of these occasions was found to be rape, and either would have been if the other incident had not occurred. It was in fact two separate rapes, and we believe that it also was as a matter of law. In 1 Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, p. 635, § 304, Rape and Related Offenses, we find the statement:

“Each act of intercourse is a separate offense.”

Cited as authority for that proposition is the ease of Mikell v. State, 242 Ala. 298, 5 So.2d 825 (1941). Mikell only implicitly so holds, by dealing with a second prosecution without saying more than that an acquittal by a jury of the first offense barred prosecution for the subsequent offense in another county, where the female testified that she submitted upon the second occasion because of fear and mental apprehension aroused in her mind upon the first occasion. It could be taken that the Alabama court would have permitted the second prosecution if it had been the fruit of new or additional force or coercion. The two alleged rapes were upon the same evening, but in different counties.

[211]*211Explicit contrary authority may be found in two 1969 cases from Oklahoma involving the same defendant in each case. He forced his victims in each instance into a laundromat rest room, committed one forcible rape with the victim standing, then required each to commit oral sex acts, and then committed the second act of intercourse upon the floor. Turnbow v. State, Okl.Cr., 451 P.2d 387 (1969); Turnbow v. State, Okl.Cr., 454 P.2d 674 (1969). The Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma held, in that context, that only a single offense of rape was committed. In each case by footnote the court said:

“1. Although not raised as an issue in Ramos v. State, Okl.Cr., 445 P.2d 807, this Court treated several acts of intercourse between the prosecutrix and the defendant, Romas, occurring over a 26 hour period of time, as constituting but a single act of rape.”

We cannot agree with the Ramos approach.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
528 S.W.2d 207, 81 A.L.R. 3d 1217, 1975 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 324, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lillard-v-state-tenncrimapp-1975.