16 Ala. 705 | Ala. | 1849
The Circuit Court dismissed the superse-deas, refused to' quash the execution, and gave judgment against the plaintiff in error for the costs, and these decisions of the court are now assigned for error. The plaintiff had been condemned under the bastardy act to pay fifty dollars a year for ten .years for the support of the child, and had given bond and sureties, payable to the judge of the County Court. The condemnation was rendered on the 9th August 1842, and the bond executed on the same day. It appears by the judgment of condemnation, that the child was then about six years
It is now contended that the County Court had no jurisdiction of the complaint, because it appeared by the mother’s complaint before the justice that the child was born in Fayette county, and because, as is alleged, it does not appear that the mother was a single woman. The enactment is, that any single woman pregnant or delivered, &e. may complain to any justice of the peace of the county where she may be so pregnant or delivered. The complaint was made in this case in Barbour county. The justice bound the plaintiff in error to appear and answer at the County Court of that county. The bond of the plaintiff to appear and answer contains a recital that the mother was pregnant of the child in Barbour county; and his bond to pay the condemnation money states that she was a single woman, and that she was delivered of the child in Barbour counly. The statute declares this bond to have the force, validity and effect of a judgment, and that executions may issue thereupon. The complaint before the justice is not required to be in writing, but when the accused appears before the justice, the latter is to examine the female, in the presence of the accused, touching the charge; and if sufficient cause be shown, the justice is to bind the accused to appear at the County Court. — Clay’s Big. 133. The questions whether she was a single woman, (as none else are within the statute,) and whether she made her complaint in the proper county, were both involved in this examination. Further — an issue is to be made up and tried in the Counly Court, “ whether the
The plaintiff’s counsel limit the construction of the bastardy act, so as to read that the father shall be compelled to support the child only till it arrives at the age of ten years; and in the next place, they infer that the execution in question was for a yearly payment which became due after the child had attained the age of ten years, and therefore improperly issued. We do not find this limitation in the act, ánd we cannot put. such a construction upon it.
Lastly — we do not enquire whether the act limiting writs of error to three years applies to cases like the present; because, if the judgment is not void, its errors cannot be looked to in support of a motion to quash the execution.
The judgment of the Circuit Court must be affirmed.