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12 Wis. 561

State v. Mushied

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Decided June 15, 1860

Wisconsin Supreme Court · decided 1860-06-15

The case is stated in the opinion of the court. contended that the provisions for appeals, (chap. 139, R. S.), apply only to civil actions, and that this is a quasi criminal action, in which a summary method of arrest and punishment is authorized, and in which the proceedings are not for the benefit of any private individual, but are designed to protect the people against loss for the maintenance of the bastard, the supervisors of the town being authorized to make the…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 1926

7 state decisions

201860187018801890190019101920decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1By the Court,

Paine, J.

¶2This was a complaint against the defendant for the purpose of compelling him to provide for the support of a bastard child. There was a trial in the circuit court, and he was convicted and adjudged to be the father of the childf and to provide for its support. Erom the judgment he has appealed to this court, in the manner provided for appeals in civil actions. The attorney general moved to dismiss the appeal, on the ground that the statute relating to appeals, applies to civil actions, and that a complaint charging the party with being the father of a bastard child, is not a civil action within the meaning of that statute. We are inclined to be of this opinion. The statute which allows *562an. appeal to "be substituted for a writ of error, was evidently designed only for civil actions, and not to change the practice in criminal cases.

¶3Bastardy proceedings, it is true, are not strictly of a criminal character, yet they have always been considered as quasi criminal cases, and the practice in them has been like the practice in criminal cases. We think the new system was not intended to change the proceedings in such cases, and that if the defendant desired to review the judgment of the circuit court, he should have sued out a writ of error.

¶4The motion to dismiss the appeal must be granted, with costs.

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