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108 Mass. 486

Commonwealth v. Smith

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 15, 1871

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1871-11-15

Indictment for larceny in a building, with this caption: “ Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Middlesex, to wit. At the superior court begun and holden at Cambridge within and for the county of Middlesex, on the second Monday of February in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one; ” averring the commission of the crime on January 17, 1871; and indorsed as follows: “ Superior court, February term 1871, 5th day. Returned by the grand jury and filed in court.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Hines

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1939

1 federal appellate · 3 state decisions

101871188018901900191019201930decided

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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Gray, J.

¶1An indictment which, taken in connection with the certificate indorsed thereon by the clerk at the time of its return into court, distinctly shows the dates of its presentment by the grand jury, and of the commission of the offence charged, is not invalidated by a defective description, in its caption, of the term of court at which it was found. It has already been held that *487an omission, in the caption, of the date of holding the term is immaterial, when the date of its presentment and return is stated in the clerk’s indorsement, and the allegation in the indictment of the time of the commission of the offence is consistent therewith. Commonwealth v. Hines, 101 Mass. 33. We are of opinion that a like rule applies to this case, and that the statement, in the caption, of the year in which the court was held, may be rejected aa inconsistent with the dates stated in the clerk’s certificate and in the body of the indictment, and as manifestly erroneous.

¶2Judgment on the verdict.

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