Holcomb v. People ex rel. Tuttle

Citations

• 79 Ill. 409

Syllabus

<p>1. Appeal—-from, county to circuit court, in bastardy case. Under the R. S. of 1874, an appeal lies from the county to the circuit court, in a bastardy case, and a trial may be had de novo, where the trial is had in the county court since the revision took efleet.</p> <p>2. Practice—•the rules of practice may be changed before a trial is had. The parties to a suit have no vested right to the rules of practice or modes of procedure prescribed by the laws in force when a suit is brought, but they may be amended, altered or repealed, and others substituted in their stead, at any time before a final trial is had.</p> <p>3. New trial—-finding as to facts. In a bastardy proceeding, where the defendant sets up an alibi, and upon this point of defense the testimony -is irreconcilably conflicting, a new trial will not be granted, especially where two juries have found the same verdict.</p> <p>4. Error will not always reverse—admission of evidence. While it is no error to reject evidence, in a bastardy trial, of sexual intercourse long before the time when the prosecutrix became pregnant, as being too remote, yet its admission against the defendant will not be a ground of reversal, unless the court can see that it tended to the injury of the defendant.</p> <p>5. Evidence—on cross-examination. Where the prosecuting witness in a bastard)7 proceeding testified that the defendant was the father of the child, and to the time and place where it was begotten, and also to acts of sexual intercourse with the defendant in 1869, some three or four years before: Held, that, whether she had intercourse with other men since 1869, was not a proper subject of cross.examination.</p> <p>6. In this class of cases an exception is made in the strict rules of cross-examination, so far as to permit the defendant to ask the prosecutrix whether, within the period of gestation, she has had intercourse with other men, for the purpose of overcoming the probability that the accused is the father of th