Commonwealth v. Taylor

Decided September 15, 1873

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1873-09-15

Complaint to the Second District Court of Southern Worcester alleging that “ John Taylor, on the tenth day of August, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-two, at Uxbridge, in said county, without any authority therefor, did keep intoxicating liquor, with intent to sell the same in said Commonwealth.'’ The warrant commanded the officer “ to arrest John Taylor, if he may be found in your precinct, and him bring before the Second District Court of Southern Worcester, in…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently November 1895

4 state decisions

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, C. J.

¶11. As the offence charged was within the jurisdiction "of the District Court, the want of an allegation of the defendant’s residence was immaterial. Gen. Sts. c. 172, § 19.

¶22. The statute establishing the District Court makes no provision for a trial by jury in that court, except in civil actions. In all criminal cases brought before it, the proceedings are like those in police courts, and a trial by jury can only be had in the Superior Court on appeal. St. 1872, c. 201, §§ 1, 6.

¶33. The remaining ground of the motion to dismiss was removed by the amendment of the original record of the District Court, and the corresponding amendment of the copy thereof. Such amendments, supplying merely clerical omissions in the record, may lawfully be made, even in criminal cases. State v. Maher, 35 Maine, 225. State v. Craton, 6 Ired. 164. Welch v. Damon, 11 Gray, 383. Commonwealth v. Phillips, 11 Pick. 28.

¶4Exceptions overruled.