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113 Mass. 8

Commonwealth v. Oaks

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1873

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1873-09-15

Complaint to a trial justice alleging that the defendant on June 10, 1873, at Brookfield, “ was a disturber and breaker of the peace, and then and there contriving and intending to disturb the peace of said Commonwealth, did, in and near to one of the public streets of said town, utter loud exclamations and outcries, and did then and thereby draw together a number of persons, to the great disturbance, damage and common nuisance of all the citizens of said Commonwealth, then…

Relies on Commonwealth v. Harris

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently January 1977

14 state decisions

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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 →

Colt, J.

¶1The whole of the instructions given to the jury are not reported. We are- to presume that a correct definition of the offence charged was given. An indictment for a public nuisance by uttering loud cries and exclamations in a public street must allege that it was to the great damage and common nuisance of all the citizens of the Commonwealth there being. This is the technical description, but the proof need not be as broad as the allegation. It is sufficient- if the acts proved are of such a nature as tend to annoy all good citizens, and do in fact annoy any one present and not favoring them. The instructions asked could not have been properly given; and the instruction given, accompanied as it must have been with a correct definition of the offence, could not have misled the jury. Commonwealth v. Smith, 6 Cush. 80. Commonwealth v. Harris, 101 Mass. 29.

¶2Exceptions overruled.

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