Dyson v. State

The appellant Dyson was charged with rape in two cases and, in each case, the jury found him guilty. In one case, not now before us, the jury added to their verdict the words “without capital punishment” and the sentence was imprisonment for twenty years; in the other, the case before us, the jury did not qualify their verdict of guilty of raping Mrs. Helen Kelly and the court imposed the death penalty. The appeal is from the latter judgment and sentence.

At the trial below in the Kelly case, the strategy of the defense was to attempt to persuade the jury that the rape had been committed by…