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100 Me. 403

State v. Call

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided September 28, 1905

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1905-09-28

On exceptions. The respondents were indicted at the January term, 1905, of the Supreme Judicial Court, Washington County, for breaking and entering a sardine factory at Eastport and stealing therefrom sardine coppers to the value of ten dollars. The respondent, Call, was not apprehended but Gilligan and McMasters were arrested and held for trial jointly.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Overruled · Decided 1905-09-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 1970

1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

3019051910192019301940195019601970decided

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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Savage, J.

¶1At the trial of the respondents for breaking and entering and larceny, the state was permitted to show by oral testimony that when they were arraigned for the same offense at the preliminary examination in the municipal court, each pleaded that he was. guilty. Further, the state was permitted to introduce a copy of the record of the municipal court showing the same fact as to one of the defendants. To the rulings, admitting these pieces of evidence, the defendants excepted,

¶2*405The defendants claim that their pleas of guilty in the lower court can properly be shown only by record, and that the copy of record introduced against one was incomplete, and hence that it was not admissible in evidence. The only imperfection we are able to discover in the copy of record is that, in the blank form of record used by the court below, the spaces for the names of witnesses ordered to recognize and the amounts of their recognizances are left blank. Whether any witnesses were ordered to recognize, or whether so much of the copy of record as relates to witnesses is superfluous, does not appear. It is immaterial in either event. The copy of record was clearly sufficient for the purpose for which it was offered.

¶3Nor is there any foundation for the contention that oral testimony was inadmissible to show the pleas of the defendants in the municipal court. A plea of guilty in court is a confession of the crime charged in the complaint or indictment, and it may be proved like any other confession. When a person accused is asked whether he is guilty or not guilty, and answers, any one present and hearing may testify what his answer, was, whenever that answer becomes material in later judicial proceedings. It is not necessary to show it by record.

¶4The other exception is waived.

¶5Exceptions overruled. Judgment for the state.

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