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109 Mass. 340

Glover's case

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1872-03-15

Habeas corpus to the sheriff of Suffolk, issued on December 27, 1871, upon the petition of William A. Glover, verified by his oath, which represented that he was unlawfully deprived of his liberty by the sheriff at the county jail; that the sheriff was holding him to answer to an indictment returned into the superior court for criminal business in Suffolk at May term 1871 of that court, wherein he was charged with being an accessory before the fact to breaking and entering a…

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““A trial before the expiration of six months meets the purpose of the statute in securing to the prisoner an early opportunity of relief from an unfounded charge. Having had that, his application for another trial is not of absolute right, but is addressed to the judicial discretion of the court.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including State v. Miller

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1872-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently October 1975

8 state decisions

3018721880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Wells, J.

¶1The statute, Gen. Sts. a. 171, § 30, which entitles the prisoner to require that he be tried “ at the next term of the court after the expiration of six months from the time when he was imprisoned,” is intended'for his protection against imprisonment upon a criminal charge, without opportunity, within a reasonable time, to meet the proofs upon which it is made, and obtain deliverance by a verdict in his favor. The next term after the expiration of six months is specified as fixing the period beyond which he cannot be detained without such an opportunity of trail, if he demands it; and not as the only time at which he can insist upon his right; nor as giving him the right then to *342require that he should have a trial resulting in acquittal or conviction, or be discharged. A trial before the expiration of six months meets the purpose of the statute in securing to the prisoner an early opportunity of relief from an unfounded charge. Having had that, his application for another trial is not of absolute right, but is addressed to the judicial discretion of the court.

¶2Prisoner remanded.

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