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158 Mass. 159

Commonwealth v. Hurley

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided February 28, 1893

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1893-02-28

Complaint to the Police Court of Lowell, for unlawfully-exposing and 'keeping for sale intoxicating liquors with intent unlawfully to sell the same in this Commonwealth, on February 7, 1892, at Lowell. Trial in the Superior Court, before Fessenden, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Finnerty · Commonwealth v. Tibbetts · Commonwealth v. Drake

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1893-02-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently April 1931

15 state decisions

6018931900191019201930decided

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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Allen, J.

¶11. No legal or constitutional right of the defendant was violated by the refusal of the presiding justice to postpone the trial until the court should be held three months afterwards in Lowell. Commonwealth v. Donovan, 99 Mass. 425. Commonwealth v. Drake, 124 Mass. 21.

¶22. The testimony that the defendant took from her garments and threw away a lager beer bottle containing whiskey was competent for the jury to consider. The words “ said to contain whiskey ” we interpret to mean that some witness testified that the bottle contained whiskey.

¶38. Certain evidence was admitted, without objection, that drunken men were near the defendant’s premises at other times *163than that specified in the complaint; and the defendant introduced evidence tending to explain the same in a way consistent with her innocence. The whole was submitted to the jury, with instructions that they might consider any of the testimony as to acts which occurred within thirty days prior to the date of the alleged offence, which tended to establish the charge in the complaint. This instruction was right. Commonwealth v. Finnerty, 148 Mass. 162.

¶44. The evidence was no doubt sufficient to warrant a conviction. If the evidence reported were questionable, there was other evidence not reported.

¶55. The inspectors might testify to material facts within their knowledge, even though they were acting unlawfully, (which we do not intimate was the fact,) when the facts came to their knowledge. Commonwealth v. Tibbetts, 157 Mass. 519.

¶6Exceptions overruled.

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