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130 Mass. 39

Commonwealth v. Kennon

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 4, 1880

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1880-11-04

Indictment in four counts, charging the defendants with four separate assaults upon Etta Wood.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1880-11-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 1961

4 state decisions

20188018901900191019201930194019501960decided

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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By the Court.

¶1The purpose for which the excluded evidence was offered, as appears by the bill of exceptions, and as has been assumed in the argument for the defendants, was not to prove insanity, but to prove a lying habit of mind or a propensity to lie; the evidence offered was only that the witness had lied on other occasions, which would present collateral issues, and was not competent as independent evidence; and it does not appear that it was offered by way of cross-examination of the witness, nor, if it was, that the defendant sought to have it admitted in the discretion of the judge.

¶2Exceptions overruled.

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