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173 N.C. 801

92 S.E 596

State v. . Herren

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided May 26, 1917

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1917-05-26

CRIMINAL action, tried before Shcm, J., at January Term, 1917, of Buncombe. The defendant is indicted under tbe act of 1913, chapter 26, which defines bigamy and makes cohabitation in North Carolina following a bigamous marriage in.another State indictable and punishable as bigamous. The State did not offer any evidence.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Idently of name is prima facie evidence of identity of person, -and is sufficient proof of the fact, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary.’' (10 R. C. L. 877.)”

quoted by 1 later decision, including State v. Carlson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1917-05-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently May 1976

1 federal appellate · 7 state decisions

301917192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Alleit, J.

¶1 The defendant in this indictment is John R. Herren, and it is charged in the indictment that his first wife was named Lizzie V. Herren,- and the plaintiff in the proceeding for divorce in Georgia was John R. Herren and the defendant therein was Lizzie Y. Herren. '

¶2 This identity of names, nothing else appearing, furnishes evidence of the identity of person.

¶3 “Identity of name is prima facie evidence of identity of person, and is sufficient proof of the fact, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary.” 10 R. C. L., 877; Wilson v. Holt, 83 Ala., 528; Estate of Williams, 128 Cal., 553; Summer v. Mitchell, 29 Fla., 179; Brown v. Metz, 33 Ill., 339; Jackson v. King, 5 Cow. (N. Y.), 237; Chamblee v. Tarbox, 27 Tex., 139.

¶4 There w.as also other evidence of the identity of the person. The complaint in Georgia alleged the marriage of plaintiff and Lizzie Y. Herren in Buncombe County, North Carolina, on 28 March, 1896, and the record of marriages of Buncombe County shows the marriage of the plaintiff and the defendant in Buncombe County, the day alleged.

¶5 The defendant also introduced evidence tending to prove that he left North Carolina in the fall of 1912, intending to make his home in Georgia, and that he did not thereafter live in North Carolina until some time during the year 1916; that he was seen in Atlanta, where the decree for divorce was rendered, and that while there he showed to a witness copies of the decree for divorce in the action entitled John R. Herren .against Lizzie Y. Herren.

¶6 There was, therefore, error in excluding the record of the action in Georgia and in refusing to permit the jury to consider it, and a new trial must be ordered.

¶7 New trial.

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