## Facts

- An eight-year-old girl left for a playground class and encountered Nicholas Rhodes, a 20-year-old neighbor she knew.
- Rhodes led the child to an abandoned building and took her to an unfurnished second-floor room.
- Rhodes told the child to lie down and pull up her legs; he lay on top of her and touched her “butt” with “something” from his pubic area, causing pain, and she told him to stop.
- The child returned home hours later crying, frightened, and dirty; her mother observed bloody underwear, a reddened vagina, and a torn, bleeding rectum.
- Medical examination showed recto-vaginal tearing; swabs from the vulva and rectum tested positive for sperm.
- At trial, the child did not describe penetration in adult anatomical terms; she testified in childlike language about pain and contact.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove “sexual intercourse” for rape under 18 Pa.C.S. § 3121, where the child did not explicitly describe penile penetration but medical and circumstantial evidence indicated genital and/or anal penetration.
2. Whether an appellate court may set aside a rape conviction by requiring anatomically precise testimony from a child victim, despite corroborating physical evidence and reasonable inferences supporting penetration.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed the Superior Court’s reversal of the rape conviction and reinstated the jury’s verdict and sentence for rape.
- Applying sufficiency review in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the court held a rational jury could find penetration beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The court concluded the child’s testimony, combined with the mother’s observations and medical findings (tearing and sperm), permitted an inference of “any penetration, however slight” of the genitals and/or anus.

## Legal Principles

- In reviewing sufficiency of the evidence, courts view the evidence and all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the verdict winner and do not reweigh credibility.
- For rape under 18 Pa.C.S. § 3121, “sexual intercourse” includes acts defined by 18 Pa.C.S. § 3101, including “any penetration, however slight,” of the genitals or anus.
- Penetration may be proved by circumstantial evidence and medical testimony; direct, explicit anatomical descriptions are not required.
- A child victim’s use of age-appropriate terms does not defeat proof of penetration when the totality of the evidence supports a reasonable inference of it.
- Appellate courts may not dissect testimony into isolated phrases to impose a heightened requirement of explicit verbal proof inconsistent with statutory definitions and the jury’s role.

## Conclusion

The court reinstated the rape conviction, holding that a child’s nontechnical description of the assault, corroborated by physical observations and medical evidence of injury and sperm, was sufficient for a jury to find “sexual intercourse” because Pennsylvania law requires only “any penetration, however slight,” and sufficiency review requires deference to reasonable inferences supporting the verdict.


Commonwealth v. Rhodes, 510 Pa. 537, 510 A.2d 1217 (Pa. 1986)