Barr v. People

Citations

• 113 Ill. 471
• 1885 Ill. LEXIS 719

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal law—assault with intent to commit rape—of the proof •necessary to convict. Before one can be convicted of an assault with intent to commit a rape, it must appear, from the evidence, that he made an unlawful assault upon the prosecutrix, with intent feloniously and forcibly to ravish and carnally know her against her will.</p> <p>2. An instruction which may be held to imply that the jury may find the defendant guilty of an assault with intent to commit a rape upon a woman if he simply made an unlawful assault without such criminal intent, is positively bad, such not being the law.</p> <p>3. Same—of an instruction on the subject—as omitting an essential element, and assuming a material fact. On the trial of one for an assault with intent to commit a rape, the court instructed the jury as follows: rjTho jury are instructed, that if you believe, from the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant made the assault as charged in the indictment, then, even though you believe, from the evidence, defendant afterwards held Mrs. B., * * * and they talked about S., then such subsequent talk could not justify or excuse the prior assault:” Held, that the instruction was erroneous. If the words, “made the assault, ” be referred to the words in the indictment that he made an “unlawful assault,” and nothing more, it was bad, as omitting the criminal intent; and if they refer to an assault with intent to ravish, as charged, it is still more erroneous, in assuming there was a prior assault made.</p> <p>4. Same—of matters connected with an offer of defendant to compromise. On the trial of one for an assault with intent to commit a rape, it is proper for the prosecution to prove that the accused sent a party to the father of the prosecutrix, who was a married woman, to ascertain if the case could be compromised; but it is not proper to prove that the father said, in reply, that he had two farms, and that he would spend them both before he would compromise the