Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

58 Ala. 390

Miles v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1877

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1877-12-15

Tried before the Hon. John HendeRSON. The defendants were convicted at the fall term, 1877, of said court, under the following indictment: “ The grand jury of said county charge that, before the finding of this indictment, Bull Miles and Amanda Overton, not sustaining the relation of man and wife, wickedly agreed and conspired together to leave, and did leave the county of Eandolph, for the purpose of illicit sexual intercourse between the said Bull Miles and Amanda…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 21 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1978

4 federal appellate · 14 state decisions

5018771880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

BEICKELL, C. J.

¶1The indictment is framed on the supposition that the consent of a man, and a woman, to commit adultery, or fornication, is a conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, and therefore indictable. We know of no authority for such a proposition; nor, so far as we can discover, was it ever before asserted, except in Shannon v. Commonwealth, 14 Penn. St. 226, and then it received unqualified diSa^pprO-*391bation. So long as tbe parties have proceeded no further than to consent and agree, tbe offense rests in mere intention, and a criminal intent must be accompanied by an act in furtherance of it, before it is tbe subject of indictment.

¶2Tbe judgment must be reversed, and a judgment here rendered discharging tbe appellants from further prosecution.

/58/ala/390 · .json · Public domain