Reitz

The defendant was tried upon an information charging perjury. The appeal is taken from the judgment following the verdict of conviction and from the order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.

The information charged that, in an action instituted by this defendant for the annulment of his marriage to May-belle Nelson Reitz and pending in the superior court in the city and county of San Francisco, this defendant falsely testified under oath that he had never lived with his wife; that she misrepresented facts to him of which he had no knowledge at the time the marriage was contracted; that, on the night of the marriage, she informed him that “she had an operation performed on her about two years before I married her—a female operation”; that “she could not bear children”; and that he knew nothing of the condition of her organs as he had no way of finding out and had no relations with her after their marriage.

On this trial it was shown by unimpeached evidence that the annulment proceeding was from its inception a fraud upon the wife and a fraud upon the court. The parties had lived together as husband and wife for several months following the marriage ceremony and were both…