¶1The defendant’s counsel asked a police officer who arrested the defendant, and who was a witness for the Commonwealth, on cross-examination, “ whether the charge he made against the defendant at the station-house when he committed him was not that of drunkenness, and the witness replied that it was.” “ Thereupon,” as the exceptions recite, “ the district attorney asked the witness to state what he said in making the charge, — to state the words he used.” The court admitted the question, against the objection of the defendant, who excepted. The witness replied, “ I told the lieutenant to book this man for drunkenness, and told him that a man had been knocked down and robbed, and this man corresponded to the description given.” The defendant’s counsel, having put in evidence the substance or effect of the charge made by the witness at the station-house, it was clearly competent for the Commonwealth to prove the exact words the witness used in making the charge. Commonwealth v. Keyes, 11 Gray, 323. Commonwealth v. Goddard, 14 Gray, 402. Farley v. Rodocanachi, 100 Mass. 427. Dole v. Wooldredge, 142 Mass. 161, 184. Exceptions overruled.
158 Mass. 78
Commonwealth v. Armstrong
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided January 6, 1893
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1893-01-06
Indictment for robbery. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Dunbar, J., the defendant, after a verdict of guilty, alleged exceptions, the substance of which appears in the opinion.
Relies on Dole v. Wooldredge · Farley v. Rodocanachi
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1893-01-06
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently October 1979
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.
View the full empirical analysis of this case →