103 Mass. 440
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided November 15, 1869
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1869-11-15
Indictment for the crime against nature. At the trial in the superior court, Putnam, J., permitted a witness, who saw the clothes of the defendant at the time in question, to testify to spots and stains on them, without producing the clothes or showing any reason for not producing them ; and also to testify that he examined the boots of the defendant and footprints near the place where the crime was committed, and thought that the boots would fit the footprints and were of…
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1869-11-15
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently December 1940
17 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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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¶1These exceptions are groundless and frivolous. Whenever evidence of the condition of clothes or other articles of personal property is competent and material, their condition may be described by witnesses, without producing the articles themselves. The correspondence between boots and footprints is a matter requiring no peculiar knowledge to judge of, and as to which any person who has seen both may testify.
¶2Exceptions overruled.