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106 Wash. 630

State v. Craig

Washington Supreme Court

Decided May 9, 1919

Washington Supreme Court · decided 1919-05-09

<p>Prostitution (1)—Living With Prostitute—Statute. Rem. Code, § 2440 making it unlawful to live with a common prostitute is constitutional.</p> <p>Same (2)—Indictment and Information (60)—Sufficiency. An information for living with a common prostitute, framed in the language of the statute, is sufficient.</p> <p>Same (3)—Evidence—Admissibility. In a prosecution for living with a common prostitute, evidence of other witnesses to his acts of commerce with her and other prostitutes at the same place is admissible as tending to show the accused’s knowledge of her moral status, and to show a general design from which criminal intent may be inferred.</p>

Relies on State v. Schuman · State v. Columbus

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1919-05-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1971

5 state decisions

201919192019301940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Holcomb, J.

¶1Appeal upon conviction of the crime of violating Rem. Code, § 2440 (unlawfully living with a common prostitute). Trial was had to the court, defendant waiving a jury.

¶2Appellant contends, (1) that the foregoing section is unconstitutional; (2) that the indictment, framed in the language of the statute, was demurrable; and (3) that the court erred in the admission of certain testimony. The first two contentions are disposed of against appellant by our decisions in State v. Colum*631bus, 74 Wash. 290, 133 Pac. 455; and State v. Schuman, 89 Wash. 9, 153 Pac. 1084, Ann. Cas. 1918A 633.

¶3The state introduced a number of witnesses, confessedly prostitutes, who testified to the fact that appellant and the woman with whom he is charged to have committed the offense lived together in a house to which the witnesses resorted from time to time; and, further, that the witnesses themselves had sexual congress with the appellant. Appellant contends that such showing was calculated to prejudice the mind of the court against him; the state argues that such evidence is admissible as tending to show the knowledge which appellant had of the moral status of the woman with whom he was cohabiting, and as going to show a system or general design from which a criminal intent or purpose may be inferred in the commission of the particular act charged, with which we agree. State v. Schuman, supra.We are convinced that the trial court did not err in admitting testimony of the character presented in this case.

¶4The judgment is affirmed.

¶5Parker and Mount, JJ., concur.

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