Opinion
12-10-1819
Mann v. The Commonwealth
The County Court of Cumberland, in October 1816, ordered William Mann jr., who appeared before them on a charge of begetting a bastard child on the body of Mary M. Hudgins, (the record not shewing by whom, or in what manner, the charge was exhibited,) to enter into a recognizance to the Governor, himself in the sum of $ 500, and his securities in the sum of $ 250 each, fifty dollars to be paid annually until the expiration of ten years; to be levied & c.; conditioned that he should indemnify the parish from all charges that might accrue from the maintenance of the said child.
The defendant, " on the trial of the cause, after the Court had ordered him to be bound in a recognizance, moved the Court to make the order so, that, if the bastard child should be bound out to a discreet person by any future Court, the recognizance should then cease to have any effect; " --and this the Court refused to do; to which opinion the defendant excepted.
To this order, a Writ of Supersedeas was granted by the Superior Court, but afterwards dismissed, as having been improvidently awarded; that Court, in it's opinion, having no jurisdiction of the case; whereupon the plaintiff in error obtained, from a Judge of this Court, a Supersedeas to the said order of dismission.
OPINION
The case being submitted without argument, Judge Brooke pronounced the Court's opinion, as follows.
The Court is of opinion, on the authority of the case of Fall v. the Overseers of the poor, in this Court, that the Superior Court erred in deciding that the Supersedeas was improvidently awarded; and it not appearing, by the proceedings in the County Court, that the charge before the magistrate by the mother of the Bastard child was in writing, nor that the warrant issued by the magistrate was so issued upon the application of the overseers of the poor, or any one of them, according to the 23d section of the Act, entitled, 'an Act providing for the poor, and declaring who shall be deemed vagrants," or that the overseers or any of them, were parties in the County Court; the Court is further of opinion that that judgment is also erroneous. Both judgments are therefore reversed; the whole proceedings quashed; and judgment is to be entered for the plaintiff in error.
3 Munf. 495.
Edit. of 1794, 1803 & 1814, c. 102.