People v. Brown

WORKS, J.,

pro tem.

The appellant was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a fifteen-year old girl, the in

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formation having been predicated upon the terms' of the juvenile court law (Stats. 1915, p. 1225; Deering’s Gen. Laws, p. 766), section 21, which provides that “Any person who shall commit any act or omit the performance of any duty, which act or omission causes or tends to cause or encourage any person under the age of twenty-one years to come within the provisions of any of subdivisions 1 to 13 inclusive of section 1 of this act, or which act or omission contributes thereto, or any person who shall, by any act or omission, or by threats, or commands, or persuasion, induce or endeavor to induce any such person, under the age of twenty-one years, to do or to perform any act or to follow any course of conduct, or to so live as would cause or manifestly tend to cause any such person to become or to remain a person coming within the provisions of any of subdivisions 1 to 13 inclusive of section 1 of this act, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” Subdivision 8 of section 1 of the act provides that the act shall apply to any person under the age of twenty-one years, “who habitually uses intoxicating liquors or habitually smokes cigarettes . . . ,” and subdivision 11. of that section makes the law, apply to any person under twenty-one, “who is leading, or from any cause is in danger of leading, an idle, dissolute, lewd or immoral life.” The evidence of appellant’s guilt was directed to these two subdivisions. He was convicted and ,was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.

The testimony of the victim of the appellant was to the effect that she first met him at a dance; that they frequently saw each other from that time forward and soon became engaged to be married, and that immediately after the engagement they began to indulge in sexual intercourse together, the acts being committed almost daily, over a considerable period of time, in the rooms of appellant in the several hotels and lodging-houses at which he lived during the period. The landlady of one of the places at which appellant lived testified that on a certain occasion she became suspicious that appellant had a girl in his room; that she went to the room and rapped on the door, but that he refused to admit her or to open the door; that he later came downstairs in company with the girl whose testimony is stated above; that she, the landlady, then asked him what right he had to bring a girl into the hotel, to which he replied that he was not doing anything, that he was changing his clothes, whereupon she said to him that he