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124 Miss. 841

Clark v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1921

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1921-03-15

Hon. W. E. Stone, Judge. Flem Clark was convicted of assault with intent to rape, and he appeals. The next assignment of error is that the court erred in .receiving, over objection of appellant, the testimony of W. E. Cross and Georgia Miller, for the state, as to the acts and statements of the prosecutrix in identifying the appellant and relating the alleged commission of the crime.

Relies on Frost v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Reversed and remanded · Decided 1921-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1981

5 state decisions

201921193019401950196019701980decided

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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Holden, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The appellant, Flem Clark, was tried and convicted for an assault with intent to rape Susie Miller, a female child under the age of twelve years, and sentenced to a term of fifteen years in the penitentiary.

¶3We shall refrain from stating the unsavory details of the offense as shown by the record; the testimony of the female assaulted was ample for conviction, when considered together with the corroborating proof in the case. However,, the record shows that at the trial of the case the witness Georgia Miller, mother of the prosecutrix, Susie Miller, was permitted, over the objection of the appellant, to testify to all the details of what Susie told her as to who, how and where the assault occurred. This was error.

¶4The outcry or complaint of the female following the offense of rape, or attempt, is competent proof even though it is hearsay evidence, but the exception to the rule admitting this character of hearsay evidence does not go to the extent of permitting the witness to testify to the facts and circumstances in detail as told to her by the female assaulted. Frost v. State, 100 Miss. 796, 57 So. 221.

¶5*844There is another fatal error in the trial of this case, and that is the state was permitted, over the objection of the appellant, to show by the witness Cross what the prosecutrix had detailed to him about the assault, and also allowed this witness to testify in detail about a proceeding or private trial of accused which he held and presided over on his plantation. At this unofficial investigation this witness Cross seems to have held a court of inquiry, having about a dozen negro men stand up in line, amongst the number was the appellant, and had this ignorant ten year old negro girl to scrutinize the crowd* and she picked out the appellant, and detailed the story of the offense there again. All of this unofficial proceeding was testified to in detail at the trial below by the witness Cross. This error resulted in serious injury to the appellant at his trial.

¶6For the two errors mentioned the judgment of the lower court is reversed, and the case remanded.

¶7Reversed and remanded.

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