Commonwealth v. Rafferty

Decided November 28, 1882

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1882-11-28

Complaint to the First District Court of Eastern Middle-sex, for keeping and maintaining a common nuisance, to wit, a certain tenement in Stonekam used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors, on March 1, 1881, and on divers other days and times between that day and July 11, 1881. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Brigham, C. J., the government proved sales of whiskey in said March, and sales of beer during the time covered by the complaint.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1882-11-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1903

9 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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C. Allen, J.

¶1Under the Pub. Sts. c. 214, § 12,* when acts apparently criminal have been proved in support of an indictment, and the defendant relies upon a license as a justification, the duty rests on him of proving a license which is broad enough to authorize the particular acts complained of. It is not sufficient for him to make it appear that he held some license; he must prove a license which is sufficient for his justification. . Exceptions overruled.

¶2 “In all criminal prosecutions in which the defendant relies for Ms justification upon any license, appointment or authority, he shall prove the same; and, until such proof, the presumption shall be that he is not so authorized.”