60 Iowa 453 | Iowa | 1883
This instruction we think was liable to prejudicially mislead the jury. The taking of improper liberties is an ambiguous phrase. It may mean no more than the undue familiarities in some states of society considered altogether compatible with the strictest virtue. If so understood by the juiy, it could have worked the defendant no prejudice. It cannot be denied, however, that the phrase may refer to unlawful sexual commerce. The jury may have understood from the instruction that, if the prosecuting witness had allowed Underwood to take improper liberties with her in private, even to the extent of submitting to his 'sexual embrace, still she was a subject of seduction, if she was in all other of her actions chaste and pure in conduct. Such, we think, is not the law.
For the errors before pointed out the judgment is
Eeversed.