[Hall v. The State.] of secrecy laid upon the consciences of the members of the grand jury by their oath and the public policy de clared, impliedly, if not expressly, in our statutory system regulating the organization of grand juries; the conducting by them of the inquisitorial examination into all indictable offenses given to them in charge by the court, as well as those brought to their knowledge committed or triable in the county; the secrecy of the finding of the indictment expressly enjoined upon them, the judge, solicitor, clerk and other officers who may know of its finding until after the arrest of defendant; the duty imposed upon every grand juror who knows or has reason to believe that a public offense has been committed to disclose the same to his fellows; and the legislative declaration relieving the juror of the obligation of secrecy, requiring him to disclose, in certain specified cases, the occurrences in the grand jury room, seem to us to establish a rule of public policy in this State, that forbids any member of the grand jury, preferring the indictment, should disclose any fact or facts which entered into the consideration influencing their finding. Certainly to permit a grand juror to testify that one or more of the jury did not vote for the finding of the bill or indictment or matters influencing the action of members of the jury would be not only a violation of his oath as a grand juror, but would be destructive and subversive of the grand jury as an institution of our judicial system and destructive of that security of freedom of thought and action and, therefore, of that independence so absolutely essential to the faithful discharge of the duties imposed upon that body, which if impaired or destroyed would be fatal to a vig orous administration of the criminal law.-Proffatt on Jury Trial, p. 89; 17 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law (2d ed.), 1295; The State v. Johnson, 115 Mo. 480; Elbin v. Wilson, 33 Ma. 135; People v. Thompson, 81 N. W. Rep. (Mich.) 344; Ex parte Sontag, 64 Cal. 525. This latter case cited is very much in point, since the statutes reviewed by the court are very similar to ours. Our conclusion upon the point under consideration finds support in the decisions of our own court, which hold it to [Hall v. The State.] be against the policy of the law to allow a petit juror to impeach a verdict rendered by a jury of which he was a member.-City of Eufaula v. Speight, 121 Ala. 613; Clay v. The City Council of Montgomery, 102 Ala. 297. This being undoubtedly the rule as to petit jurors, much more weighty are the considerations for applying and enforcing the same rule as to grand jurors. With the testimony of the two members of the grand jury, who were examined as witnesses, to prove the facts alleged in the motion, eliminated, there is no proof of the facts alleged in it. We might stop here. But if that evidence could be considered, we do not think that it can be affirmed that it establishes the fact to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that the grand jury were improperly influenced to find the indictment.-Sparrenberger v. The State, supra. Nor do we think that it shows any conduct on the part of the judge or the solicitor which would vitiate the indictment. The motion was properly denied. The next question presented is the action of the court in holding the defendant's plea in bar, of autre fois acquit, insufficient. By the averments of that plea it is made to appear that the defendant had been indicted for rape upon the girl whom it is here charged he seduced, and that he was acquitted by a jury after trial upon the merits. It is further averred in the plea that the defendant had only one act of sexual intercourse with the girl and that this aet was involved in the charge of rape upon which he was tried and acquitted, and that the same act is involved in the charge of seduction for which he is arraigned in the present case. It is insisted that because this act of sexual intercourse was a necessary ingredient and, therefore, must necessarily be proven in order to sustain both charges, that the acquittal on the charge of rape is a bar to this prosecution. In other words, because this single act is common to both offenses, although each offense necessarily includes other acts entirely different, having no resemblance whatever to each other, that an acquittal of rape is an acquittal of the seduction. To see that the act of sexual intercourse is the only one at all common to both [Hall v. The State.] offenses, we have but to point out that in rape, force, actual or constructive, is necessary, and the character of the female for virtue and chastity, except as bearing upon the question of consent, is utterly immaterial, as is also whether she be a married or an unmarried woman; while in seduction the female must be an unmarried woman, and her consent to the act of sexual intercourse must have been obtained by means of temptation, deception, arts, flattery or a promise of marriage. The rule in this State is that: "A former acquittal is no bar to a subsequent prosecution, unless the accused could have been convicted upon the first indictment, upon proof of the facts averred in the second."-Dominick v. The State, 40 Ala. 680; The State v. Standifer, 5 Port. 523; Bowen v. The State, 106 Ala. 178. See also Stewart v. The State, 60 Am. St. Rep. 35 and note. We have but to apply this rule to the plea to see its insufficiency and the correctness of the ruling of the court in sustaining the demurrer to it. The next point pressed upon our attention for consideration is that the testimony given by defendant upon his trial for rape was improperly admitted. The argument made proceeds upon the idea that the confessions or admissions made by him while testifying were not voluntary. That he was on that occasion "flattered by hope" and "tortured by fear" into admitting the fact of the girl's consent to his intercourse with her, one of the necessary constituents of the crime with which he is now charged and being tried, and which, it seems, he succeeded in getting the jury trying him for rape to believe. It is not contended that the rule which applies to the admission of confessions, extra-judicial, requiring the prosecution to show them affirmatively to have been voluntarily made before they are competent, has any application here. The argument is rather, that his confession that the girl consented to his intercourse with her, was made under such circumstances and surroundings as to beget falsehood, rather than truth, and, therefore, being impelled by the desire to be acquitted, his admission of that criminating fact was not voluntary. The answer to all this, it seems to me, is that he was not compelled to testify at all-to make any ad [Hall v. The State.] missions whatever. And if he testified falsely in order to escape the punishment which the law fixes for the offense of rape, that is a matter for his conscience, but does not address itself, with any degree of consideration, to the conscience of a court. The evidence was not ob jectionable on this account.-Seaborn r. The State, 20 Ala. 15; Bibb v. The State, 83 Ala. 84. The stenographer's report of defendant's testimony taken by him was properly admitted in evidence if the corpus delicti was otherwise shown.--1 Greenleaf on Ev. (16th ed.), §§ 439a, 439b, pp. 540, 541, 542, and notes 12 and 17; Mims r. Sturdirant, 36 Ala. 630; Acklin v. Hickman, 63 Ala. 494. Was there evidence of the corpus delicti? It has been often decided by this court that the corpus delicti may be shown by circumstances. It need not be shown by direct proof. There was an admission, made in open court by defendant that he had sexual intercourse with the girl, whom from the evidence had just about ar rived at the age of puberty-that critical period when in the process of nature she was budding into womanhoon-a period perhaps, when she was more susceptible to the arts of the seducer than any other. Taking into consideration the age of the girl, the relation in which the defendant stood to her her teacher; his act of se lecting her for his special assistance in her studies, his persuasive insinuation that he was her best friend; his fondling her hand; his declaration to her that she could trust him; his promise and pledge, in token of which he gave to her "his right hand," that he would not betray her; her innocence and ignorance of the sexual relation, all of which the evidence tends to establish, there can be little doubt that the question of the proof of the corpus delicti was for the jury, and that it was sufficiently es tablished to authorize the admission of defendant's tes timony on his trial for rape. In 2 McClain on Crim. Law it is said: "The exact manner or kind of seductive arts cannot be defined. Every case must depend upon its own peculiar circumstances, together with the conditions in life, advantages, age and intelligence of the parties. So where it ap [Hall v. The State.] peared that the prosecutrix was of tender years and under the protection of defendant, it was held that the circumstances themselves would tend to make out a case of seduction." In Lybarger v. The State, 2 Wash. 562, it was said: "The jury heard the testimony, saw the witnesses on the stand, noted their manner of testifying, listened to the testimony concerning the age and experience of the defendant and the tender age and want of experience of the female; the fact that she was under his roof, and to a certain extent under his protection; that she was just merging into womanhood and that she was at that critical age when judgment is weak and passion strong and when virtue falls an easy prey to the blandishments of the designing libertine-artifices and blandishments which, exercised upon a woman of more mature years, would fall harmless. All these things the jury had a right to take into consideration." In State v. Fitzgerald, 63 Iowa, 268, the indictment charged that the defendant seduced the woman named in it by promising to give her presents if she would allow him to have sexual intercourse with her; that defendant told her that there would be no harm in her having sexual intercourse with him and that the same was not wrong and could not hurt or injure; the fe male being overcome by said false promises and said false statements and by reason thereof yielded to defendant, etc. etc. The court said: "The defendant demurred to the indictment upon the ground that the facts charged did not constitute seduction and that it charged two offenses. The demurrer was properly overruled. There is no legal standard by which to determine what false promises, artifices and deception are sufficient to constitute the crime of seduction. Of course, mere unlawful commerce for a consideration paid is not seduction. There must be some artifice or false promise by which the virtuous female is induced to surrender her person to the accused. What would be sufficient to overpower the mind of one woman would be insufficient to lead away another of more mature mind and discretion. In this case, the defendant was a married man of about the age of fifty years and Nellie |