17 Ga. App. 259 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1915
The defendant was charged with the offense of seduction. Upon the trial the prosecutrix testified that, during the existence of a bona fide engagement to marry, the accused accomplished her ruin. The defendant, in his statement' at the trial, did not deny the engagement, but asserted that while he requested his fiancée to permit him to have sexual intercourse with her more than once during the engagement, she always refused, and that he never had sexual intercourse with her. The jury found him guilty of fornication, and the trial judge overruled his motion for a new trial.
The second insistence of the plaintiff in error is that the evidence does not show that he was an unmarried man. In Hopper v. State, 54 Ga. 389, it was held that, one indicted for seduction could be convicted of fornication although it was not affirmatively alleged in the indictment that the accused was an unmarried man, and in the opinion in that case reference is made to the probable implication that the parties to the alleged seduction were single because that is the normal state of both man and woman, and a condition once shown to exist may be presumed to have continued. In Bennett v. State, 103 Ga. 66 (29 S. E. 919, 68 Am. St. R. 77), in Neil v. State, 117 Ga. 14 (43 S. E. 435), and in later decisions, the ruling in Hopper v. State, supra, was explained, and it was pointed out that that ruling related only to the accusation, it being in all cases essential, in order to authorize a conviction of fornication, that the proof should show that both parties were unmarried at the time of the alleged criminal act. Notwithstanding the rulings in Bennett v. State, supra, and in Neil v. State, supra, we hold the evidence in the present case sufficient to authorize the verdict. Any fact can be proved by circumstantial evidence as well as by direct proof. It is uncontradicted that for nearly three years the defendant visited “the woman in the case,” either as a suitor for her hand or as her prospective husband. He
There was no error in overruling the motion for a new trial.
Judgment affirmed.