Commonwealth v. Campbell

Decided February 24, 1892

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1892-02-24

Evidence — Identity—Conversations with Officer. On an indictment, evidence of the defendant’s personal appearance two years before the date of the alleged offence, and also at the time of his arrest two years after that date, is admissible upon the question of identity. A conversation between a police officer and a defendant in a criminal case, which relates in part to the alleged offence and in part to other matters, is admissible only so far as it pertains to the offence; and the admission of the whole conversation, as well as of separate conversations witli the defendant having no relation to the crime charged, but tending to show that he was a notorious criminal, is erroneous.

Relies on Dole v. Wooldredge · Commonwealth v. Quinn

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1892-02-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently April 1979

2 federal appellate · 17 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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Barker, J.

¶11. The crime charged was committed in October, 1889. We cannot say that upon the question of identity evidence as to the defendant’s personal appearance in 1887, or at the time of his arrest in 1891, was too remote. Commonwealth v. Quinn, 150 Mass. 401, 404.

¶22. The court erred in permitting Watts to testify to the whole of his conversations with the defendant. The government should have been allowed to introduce only such portions of the conversations as pertained to the alleged offence. Not only was the witness not so restricted, but he was allowed to *539testify to separate conversations with the defendant, having no relation to the crime charged, and apparently introduced with the sole purpose of showing that the defendant was a notorious criminal. Commonwealth v. Keyes, 11 Gray, 323, 325. Straw v. Greene, 14 Allen, 206. Dale v. Wooldredge, 142 Mass. 161, 184.

¶3 Exceptions sustained.