17 Cal. 598 | Cal. | 1861
Field, C. J. and Baldwin, J. concurring.
We think that under the circumstances an actual marriage should have been proved. The general rule that in actions of this nature the marriage may be inferred from the cohabitation of the parties, we do not understand to be applicable. We cannot indulge this inference without presuming that the defendant has been guilty of the crime of bigamy, and the fact that it involves such a presumption is sufficient to repel it. In the absence of criminative proof, t is never to be supposed, as a matter of legal presumption, that a person has violated the criminal law; and the presumption in favor of innocence, says a learned writer, is not confined to proceedings instituted with a view of punishing the supposed offense, but holds in all civil suits where it comes collaterally in question. (Best on Pre. Ev. 64.) Bishop in his work on marriage and divorce, (Sec. 324) says: “ Where parties are cohabiting together as man and wife, under the reputation of being married, that universal principle of law that all persons are presumed innocent until the contrary is shown, comes in and says they shall be prima fade considered to be married, and not to be living in-an unlawful intercourse.” But in the next section he proceeds as follows: “ On a libel for divorce, in which adultery is alleged, the marriage cannot be sufficiently inferred from the matrimonial cohabitation of the parties to the suit, with the reputation of being married persons, which follows, as the shadow, such cohabitation; because the same benign presumption of law which would infer therefrom an actual marriage, in order to prevent the inference that an offense had been committed, would strive, in like manner and for the same reason, to infer a marriage
We are referred by counsel to the 121st section of the Act con-, cerning crimes and punishments, but we are unable to perceive that. the provisions of that section have any bearing upon the question.. The section provides that in prosecutions for bigamy it shall not be necessary to prove either of the marriages by the register, or c.eiv
We think the evidence was insufficient to establish the marriage, and the judgment is therefore affirmed.