Case Name: Olive Quinn v. Almerin Quinn
Court: Vermont Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Vermont
Decision Date: 1844-02
Citations: 16 Vt. 426
Docket Number: 
Parties: Olive Quinn v. Almerin Quinn.
Judges: 
Reporter: Vermont Reports
Volume: 16
Pages: 426–426

Head Matter:
Olive Quinn v. Almerin Quinn.
The record of a conviction for assault and battery, committed by a husband upon his wife, is evidence-, on a hearing on a petition by the wife for a divorce, only of the fact of the conviction, and not that the assault and battery alledged was actually committed.
This was a libel for a divorce from the bonds of matrimony, alledging, as a cause, the intolerable severity of the petitionee. In the course of the trial the counsel offered in evidence the record of a conviction of the petitionee of an assault and battery upon the petitioner.

Opinion:
By the Court.
We could not receive the record, in this case, for *any purpose, except to prove the fact of the conviction. It would not be proof of the assault and battery alledged, for the same reason that such a conviction is not evidence in a civil case, when the same matter comes in question, — that is, that it might have been obtained upon the testimony of the person in whose favor it is offered.