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.
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.
16 Vt. 426
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