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22 Tenn. 203

Britain v. State

Tennessee Supreme Court

Decided July 15, 1842

Tennessee Supreme Court · decided 1842-07-15

The grand jury of Claiborne county, at the September term, 1840, at the instance of Bryant Baker, prosecutor, indicted Levi Britain for lewdness. ’ This indictment charged that on the 1st day of August, 1840, and on divers other days, in the county of Claiborne, “Levi Britain, was and still is the owner of certain slaves, and was hound toi have and keep said slaves so clad and covered, as to prevent those parts of the persons of said slaves, as by the rules of decency should…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1842-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently May 1993

3 state decisions

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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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Green, J.

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2In this case, it is not questioned that if the defendant caused and permitted his slaves to go about the country in such a state of nakedness, as is alledged in the indictment, he is guilty of lewdness, andought to be punished; but it is insisted that the evidence does not support the indictment. It is true that the witnesses do not prove that the defendant, by any act or command of his, required the female slave to exhibit herself so destitute of clothes, as she is described by the witnesses to have been; but as she was seen upon several occasions in this state of nakedness, and other times with garments greatly tattered and torn, it might be inferred by the jury, that the master withheld from her the clothing necessary to cover her, and if so, by requiring her to perform labor for him in the field, he caused her to go about in this naked condition. If she had been entirely stripped, it would have been more probable that the act was voluntary on her part, but as she had dirty rags, the remains of garments, banging about her, and was frequently seen in this situation, we cannot say the jury did wrong in finding that her master caused and permitted the existence of these facts.

¶3Let the judgment be affirmed,

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