111 Iowa 267 | Iowa | 1900
Do the facts of this case render such an inference improper? In Harvey v. State, 53 Ark. 425 (14 S. W. Rep. 645), a woman was awakened in the nighttime by the hard breathing of a stranger near her face and touching a private part of her person. She screamed, and saw him getting out of the window. The circumstances of State v. Boon, 57 Am. Dec. 555, were similar, except that the accused there touched the foot of the sleeping girl, and after it was drawn up grasped the ankle. In each of these cases a conviction of entering with intent to commit rape was sustained. The situation of the defendant when found kneeling at the bedside of the sleeping girl with his hand on her private parts, certainly indicated that he then had designs on her person, but other circumstances point to the improbability of that being his purpose, in entering. The natural impulse of one intending to satisfy his lust would have been to prevent intrusion and insure secrecy. The record is silent as to the
one view, it mad© no difference whether the defendant knew anything of value was in the house or not; for the intent to steal, and not its execution, is the essential ingredient of the crime charged. Lanier v. State, 76 Ga. 304; State v. Beal, 37 Ohio, St. 108; Harvick v. State, 49 Ark. 514 (6 S. W. Rep. 19). But evidence of this character was admissible as bearing on the. intent of defendant- in entering, - — whether to steal or assault the girl. It appeared from Fort’s testimony, drawn out after the above ruling, that the valuables in the house were a suit of clothes nearly new, six or eight dollars in money, and a watch. There was no evidence of defendant’s knowledge of what Fort had and for this reason the ninth instruction, relating thereto, was rightly refused.