Humphrey v. State

• Decision Date: 13 January 1891
• Citation: 78 Wis. 569,47 N.W. 836
• Parties: HUMPHREY v. STATE.
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court

78 Wis. 569

47 N.W. 836

HUMPHREY

v.STATE.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Jan. 13, 1891.

Error to circuit court, Grant county; GEORGE CLEMENTSON, Judge.

This is a prosecution for bastardy in which the plaintiff in error is charged with having begotten a child on the body of Lizzie McGuigan, June 25, 1888. To that charge he pleaded not guilty. It appears that Lizzie was 23 years of age at the time it is alleged the child was begotten, and that Paul was 16 years of age the previous January. At the close of the trial, the jury returned a verdict of guilty; and it was thereupon adjudged that he was the father of the bastard child of said Lizzie, born alive March 16, 1889, and that he should stand chargeable with the future maintenance and support of the child, and expenses, as stated in the judgment. From that judgment, the defendant, Paul, brings this writ of error.Brooks & Blanchard, E. M. Lowry, and W. E. Carter, for plaintiff in error.

A. R. Bushnell, for the State.

CASSODAY, J., ( after stating the facts as above.)

It is claimed that the verdict is not sustained by the evidence. This is based on the theory that the complaining witness is contradicted by disinterested witnesses in so many important particulars, and by so many circumstances, that the jury were not justified in returning a verdict of guilty. However potent may have been such reasons when addressed to the trial court, vested with a broad discretion in the premises, yet, sitting as a court of review, we do not feel at liberty, on the record before us, to hold that there was an abuse of such discretion in refusing to set aside the verdict on that ground.

2. Exception is taken because the court refused to allow the defense to contradict denials made by the complaining witness on cross-examination of having scuffled with one Diddis on the porch, and thrown water at the well, and having called upon a lady present to come and help her, a few days before the alleged intercourse. In rejecting such testimony, the court stated and ruled, in effect, that the defense were bound by the answers of such witness as to such occurrences in the presence of the whole family, but that the defense were at liberty to give any evidence tending to prove that, or about the time of the alleged begetting of the child, the complaining witness had an opportunity, or was with other men, or any other man, under circumstances which would give rise to a presumption, or to a suspicion, that there might have...