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1 Mass. 203

Commonwealth v. Stevens

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 15, 1804

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1804-11-15

The defendant was indicted for forging a thirty-dollar bill of the Bevei ly bank, and for uttering the same. In both counts, the bill was laid to be of the tenor following, viz., [and set out the bill.] The defendant pleaded not guilty.

Cited in Abbott (1879)’s definition of “Tenor” · Anderson (1889)’s definition of “Tenure”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1804-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 1917

6 state decisions

20180418101820183018401850186018701880189019001910decided

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.

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The Court

¶1(Dana, C. J., Sedgwick, Sewall, and Thacher, justices) ruled that the number of the bill, and the words “ thirty dollars ” at the head of it, were not parts of the bill, and, therefore, not necessary to be set out; and they mentioned the case of Robert Bailey, at the last September term in Hampshire, in which the Court were' unanimously of the same opinion. [Ante, p. 62.]

¶2The defendant’s counsel then objected to the bill going in evidence, because in the first count there was no allegation of an intent to defraud, and in the second count, a part of the date, viz., the words and figures, “ the 24th day of J” were omitted in the indictment.

¶3The Court said the first objection would be proper in arrest of judgment, and that the second was fatal as to giving the bill in evidence, the word tenor binding the party to a strict recital.

¶4The defendant consented to an amendment of the second count, and pleaded guilty to that count; the Attorney-General consenting to enter a nolle prosequi on the first count in the indictment.

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