State v. Sanders

225 P.2d 150, 54 N.M. 369
CourtNew Mexico Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 9, 1950
Docket5303
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 225 P.2d 150 (State v. Sanders) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Mexico Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Sanders, 225 P.2d 150, 54 N.M. 369 (N.M. 1950).

Opinions

SADLER, Justice.

The defendant was convicted of common law rape and sentenced to the state penitentiary for a term of years. He prosecutes this appeal from the judgment and sentence so pronounced upon him.

The victim of the assault was a young woman twenty-two years of age residing' with her parents at Clovis, New Mexico, at which city she was employed in a produce store. On the evening in question, October 6, 1949, at the invitation of a girl friend she went on what is known as a “blind date” to the neighboring town of Portales in Roosevelt County in which county the offense charged took place. A “blind date” is one in which the boy and girl who are to be each other’s companion for the evening have never met before, or supposedly have not. The prosecutrix had known the girl who invited her on the blind date for about three years.

The younger brother of defendant, Ray Sanders, was employed in 'Clovis and the girl friend who invitéd prosecutrix to go on the “blind date” for the evening was to be his date. The two traveling in a coupe proceeded to the home of prosecutrix in Clovis after the dinner hour on the evening of Thursday, October 6, 1949, and after picking up prosecutrix proceeded to Portales where they arrived about 9 p. m., stopping at a filling station operated by defendant’s father where he was employed. Here they awaited defendant until ten (10:00) o’clock when he got off from work, following which defendant went by his home to bathe and change clothes. All then went out together looking for some spot where they might dance. They paused momentarily at a place known as the “Wagon Wheel” in Portales. Because they found no friends there they proceeded to an establishment some distance from Portales on the Roswell highway beyond a town known as Kenna. Here they found tables, a bar and as well roojn for dancing.

Alighting from their car at this place, the four entered and ordered drinks. The two brothers had each consumed a can of beer at their father’s filling station before leaving Portales. Between two and three hours were spent in dancing at this tavern, during which time all members of the party did some drinking. Although prosecutrix never before this occasion had drunk an alcoholic beverage, at the urging of other members of the party she drank some whiskey in a “coke,” also a gin fizz. While there, the defendant consumed “quite a bit of beer and whiskey both.”

The party had traveled from Portales to the tavern and dance hall beyond Kenna in a two-door Chevrolet sedan belonging to the defendant. On the way out from Portales the defendant and prosecutrix rode in the back seat of the car, with Ray and his date occupying the front seat and Ray doing the driving. During the trip out, the defendant had not mistreated prosecutrix in any way nor made improper advances to her. On the return trip Ray, the brother, and his date, continued to occupy the front seat and he continued to drive, notwithstanding he was pretty well intoxicated by this time. Soon after starting out on the return trip to Portales, however, the defendant, who like his brother was intoxicated, began making efforts to have intercourse with the prosecutrix. She called on her girl friend on the front seat for assistance. The extent of her aid, however, was to request defendant to leave prosecutrix alone. The defendant ignored this admonition and at his request the brother, Ray, who was driving, stopped the car. The defendant persisted in his.efforts to have intercourse with prosecutrix. Finally, he became so rough with her that she seized a bottle of gin up near the rear window of the car, which had been purchased before leaving the bar and broke it over defendant’s head. She wielded it with such force that it knocked him out momentarily.

It was at this point the prosecutrix, thinking she might the more easily escape if out of the car, suggested that they get out of the car. The brother and his date had gotten out of the car when it stopped and walked down the road for some distance. However, they had returned and were in the car when the prosecutrix struck defendant over the head with the bottle of gin and as well when, as already stated, she suggested that defendant and she get out of the car. In line with her stated reason for wishing to leave the car, namely, as affording a better chance to escape the defendant, she began running immediately upon alighting from the car. ' The defendant, apparently anticipating this act on her part, pursued and soon overtook her. Seizing her by the right arm and twisting it he forced her through a barbed wire fence which parallelled the highway and into a pasture alongside it.

Then forcing her to accompany him out into the pasture for some distance from the highway, he shoved or threw her to the ground and forcibly had intercourse with her repeatedly during the period of more than an hour he kept her there. During his attack the prosecutrix cried out three times but this brought no aid from the other couple who claimed not to have heard her. It would serve no good purpose to recite the sordid details of defendant’s acts and conduct in forcing the prosecutrix, who admittedly was a virgin, to have intercourse with him; nor to quote the callous language employed by him in stating to his brother and the latter’s girl companion the proof of her virginity, following the rape committed by ■him. Suffice it to say that the facts stated and additional facts in evidence including complaint by prosecutrix to her mother upon arriving home, the testimony of physicians who examined her the day following, the contrasting strength of the two, she weighing only ninety-three (93) pounds and he one hundred forty-five (145), and other corroborating circumstances, all afford ample evidence to support the verdict .of guilty which the jury returned into open court at the close of the trial.

The defense was that the prosecutrix consented voluntarily to intercourse with her by the defendant. He so testified and insists the trial court erred in overruling his request for an instructed verdict interposed both when the state rested and renewed when all the evidence was in. The principal contention in support of this claim is that the story of the prosecutrix 'is so inherently improbable that the jury should not have been given an opportunity to pass upon its credibility. 'Chiefly, it was because the prosecutrix testified she agreed to a date with him at a wrestling match the following night and failed to malee complaint at two points where the party stopped between the place of the offense and the delivery of prosecutrix at her home in Clovis about 4:30 a. m. that night. Also, her response given below to a query by the girl companion of defendant’s brother upon returning to the car with defendant after the offense as to whether they, prosecutrix and defendant, had their differences settled, to-wit: “I told her we was all settled.”

As to the date agreed to for the following night, prosecutrix stated that throughout his acts of intercourse with her defendant kept importuning her for a date for the wrestling match in Clovis the following night and, having ignored her repeated pléas to stop his attacks and leave her alone, she thought by agreeing to the date she might get him to cease his attacks and leave her alone. It did have exactly that effect. It is interesting to note in this connection that defendant failed to show up the following night for the date which he admitted having made with her. In response to numerous inquiries as to why he failed to do so, his only response was: “I didn’t want to.”

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Bluebook (online)
225 P.2d 150, 54 N.M. 369, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-sanders-nm-1950.