Commonwealth v. Bean

Decided October 24, 1884

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1884-10-24

<p>At the trial of an indictment for an assault with intent to commit a rape upon a girl, evidence that the defendant, about a month before the assault, invited the girl to walk with him to certain woods, and that, about five weeks after the assault, he followed her in a street at night, is admissible, in the discretion of the presiding judge.</p>

Relies on Thayer v. Thayer · Commonwealth v. Bradford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1884-10-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently February 1942

4 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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Morton, C. J.

¶1The burden was upon the government to prove that the defendant assaulted the girl with the intent to ravish her. The evidence that the defendant, about a month before the assault, invited her to walk with him to the Berlin woods, and that, about five weeks after the assault, he followed her in the street at night, was admissible in the discretion of the presiding judge. These acts of the defendant had some tendency to show a continuing lustful purpose, and, if so interpreted by the jury, they tended to show the intent with which the assault was committed. Commonwealth v. Bradford, 126 Mass. 42. Thayer v. Thayer, 101 Mass. 111.

¶2 Exceptions overruled.