McRae v. State

Citations

• 104 Miss. 861
• 61 So. 977

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law. Former prosecution. Code 1906, section 5055, subdivision K-1916-5058. Limitation. Bo,stands. Presumptions. Husband and wife. Witnesses. Competency.</p> <p>Where a husband and father is prosecuted for vagrancy under Code 1906, section 5055, subdivision K, which declares that “every person who shall abandon his wife or family, without good cause, leaving her or them without support, or in danger of becoming a public charge,” shall be deemed a vagrant and punished as such. The failure of a husband and father who is the head of a family to support his wife and child, without just cause, is a violation of the statute and the fact that two</p> <p>years prior to his present prosecution he had been prosecuted for the same offense and had compromised by paying a given amount per month for six months for such support was no bar to the subsequent prosecution as the offense being a continuing one, the bar of the statute of limitations did not attach.</p> <p>2. Bastardy. Presumption of legitimacy.</p> <p>It is a general rule of law that a child born after marriage is presumed to be legitimate, and this presumption of legitimacy is not defeated by an antenuptial conception.</p> <p>3. Witnesses. Competency. Husband and wife.</p> <p>At common law the husband and wife were not competent as witnesses for or against each other, but an exception to this general rule under the common law, was that a wife is a competent witness against her husband in a prosecution for an assault and battery committed by him on her person and other exceptions may be made by statute.</p> <p>4. Witnesses. Husband and wife. Competency. Controversy between husband and wife.</p> <p>The riile of the common law. in regard to husband and wife testifying against each other has been modified by statute. . Section 1679, Code 1906, provides that in the trial of divorce suits both parties shall be competent witnesses against the other. Section 1916 provides that a husband and wife may be introduced