Commonwealth v. Ellis

This is a complaint, under the St. of 1885, c. 176, charging the defendant with the offence of unreasonably neglecting to provide for the support of his minor child. At the trial in the Superior Court, the defence was that the child was not the child of the defendant, but was a bastard child of the defendant’s wife. To meet this defence, the government put in evidence a record of the Second District Court of Bristol, showing a prior conviction and sentence of the defendant, under the same statute, for unreasonably neglecting to support the same child. The presiding justice ruled, as matter of…