82 Pa. Super. 291 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1923
Argued October 22, 1923.
This is an appeal from an order of the court of quarter sessions requiring a husband to pay his wife $12.50 per week for her support and maintenance from November 1, 1922, and to give security for compliance with the order and to stand committed until the order is complied with. The proceeding was under the Act of April 13, 1867, P.L. 78. The complaint charged that the husband unlawfully and wilfully and without reasonable cause separated himself from his wife and that, since September 26, 1922, he neglected and refused to support her. At the hearing in the court below, defendant rested his defense on a plea of former conviction in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia on a similar proceeding instituted by his wife on December 30, 1920. His counsel presented an exemplified copy of the record of the proceeding in the municipal court, showing that on January 14, 1921, that court made an order that defendant pay his wife $12.50 per week from that date; that on June 16, 1922, on petition of a probation officer of that court, setting forth that the beneficiary "is a prosperous business woman in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and therefore out of the jurisdiction," and praying that the order of June 14, 1921, against the defendant be suspended, that court *293
made an order vacating the order of January 14, 1921, and remitting all arrearages due under the same. Defendant contends that under this state of facts the original arrest and order in the year 1920 constituted a conviction of the offense then charged, and that such conviction is a bar to further prosecution for the same offense. Manifestly both prosecutions were brought under the Act of April 13, 1867, P.L. 78. Desertion was not a crime under that act. It became a crime in this State by the Act of March 13, 1903, P.L. 26, of which act we said in Com. v. Mills,
The judgment is affirmed.
