Commonwealth v. Ford

Decided February 6, 1888

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1888-02-06

Complaint for keeping and maintaining a common nuisance, to wit, a certain tenement used for the illegal sale and keeping for sale of intoxicating liquors. At the trial in the Superior Court, on appeal, before Aldrich, J., the defendant was a witness in his own behalf, and the government offered in evidence a record showing his previous conviction of a similar offence.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-02-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently October 1968

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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By the Court.

¶1Under the Pub. Sts. c. 169, § 19, the conviction of a witness of any crime, whether a felony or a misdemeanor, may be shown to affect his credibility. Commonwealth v. Hall, 4 Allen, 305.

¶2It is to be presumed that proper instructions were given; and such instructions necessarily implied that the jury could not act by a majority, and that each juror must act upon his own convictions. The judge was not required to repeat these principles, which every juror must have understood. Whether he should do so was within his discretion, and no exception lies to his refusal to give the further instructions at the time and in the form requested by the defendant. Exceptions overruled.