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129 Mass. 479

Commonwealth v. Hamilton

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided October 22, 1880

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1880-10-22

Indictment, found at March term 1880 of the Superior Court, alleging in the first count that the defendants, on February 10, 1880, at Greenfield, tortured a horse by pulling off its tongue; and, in the second count, that the defendants, on the same day and at the same place, cruelly mutilated a horse by pulling off its tongue. Hamilton pleaded in bar of the indictment a former acquittal upon a complaint to a trial justice charging him alone with the same offence.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1880-10-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 18 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2013

3 district · 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.

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Soule, J.

¶1The demurrers were properly overruled. The offences charged in the complaints were within the jurisdiction of the trial justice, but his jurisdiction was concurrent with that of the Superior Court. It was within his province, therefore, either to try the defendants who were brought before him on the complaints, or to examine them merely with reference to ordering them to recognize for their appearance before the Superior Court. Commonwealth v. Harris, 8 Gray, 470. Commonwealth v. Boyle, 14 Gray, 3.

¶2*481It is clear, from an inspection of the record of the proceedings before the trial justice, that he took jurisdiction in each case only for the purpose of making a preliminary examination, to determine whether to order Hamilton in the first case, and both defendants in the second case, to recognize for appearance at the Superior Court. Any conclusion arrived at on such an examination is hot conclusive as to the guilt or innocence of a party charged, and is not a bar to a subsequent indictment for the same offence. Judgment affirmed.

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