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13 Mass. 245

Commonwealth v. Cunningham

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1816-06-15

<p>A plea of an acquittal by a justice of the peace was holden to be a sufficient bar to an indictment for an assault and battery, which alleged, that the life of the person beaten was put in great danger.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1816-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently November 1938

10 state decisions

201816182018301840185018601870188018901900191019201930decided

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 →

¶1The Court suggested, that, when the papers were handed to them, *202they were somewhat at a loss to conjecture upon what ground the Attorney-General meant to rest his demurrer. Upon looking into the proceedings of the justice, as shown on oyer, some inaccuracies were observable; but these were not mentioned in the argument, and, upon consideration, they seemed well enough.

¶2* As to the ground taken by the Solicitor- General, it is . wholly untenable. We cannot say, from this record, that the justice had not authority by law to try the defendants, and, according to his discretion, upon the evidence, to acquit or convict them. The words relied on are generally used merely of course. Every battery, in strictness of speech, may be said to put the life of the sufferer in danger. But, in this case, there is an express averment, that the justice had jurisdiction of the matter; and this is not traversed. This must certainly be a sufficient answer to the argument from the language of the indictment.

¶3 Plea in bar good.

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