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39 Ala. 554

Smith v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided January 15, 1865

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1865-01-15

Ebom the Circuit Court of Butler, Tried before the Hon. John K. Henr£, The indictment in this case was found at the March term of said circuit court, 1864, and charged that the defendant, “Martha Smith, a white woman, did live in a state of adultery or fornication with a negro man named Joe, the property of some person who is to the grand jury unknown,” or, as alleged in another count, “the property of her, the said Martha Smith.” On the trial, as the bill of exceptions…

Relies on Collins v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1865-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently June 1974

7 state decisions

20186518701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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PHELAN, J.

¶1The charge of the court, “that one act of criminal intimacy was not sufficient to constitute the offense” of living in adultery or fornication under our statute, was correct; but the qualification which the court gave, was not so. No previous arrangement, or agreement between the parties, can make that “ a living in adultery or fornication,” which would not be so without it. It is not necessary, to constitute “a living in adultery or fornication,” that the guilty parties should live together in the same house continually, as man and wife. Any habitual illicit intercourse between them, though Jiving apart, will constitute the offense.—Collins v. The State, 14 Ala. 609. How long such habitual illicit intercourse must be continued, is not settled. Each case must depend on its own facts; and the jury, under the rule as stated, must be left to decide upon these. Whether, under the facts of this case, such an habitual illicit intercourse as amounted to “a living in adultery or fornication” did, or did not exist, will remain for the jury to decide, in all probability, when this case goes back for another trial.

¶2The judgment below is reversed, and the cause remanded.

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