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162 Mass. 504

Commonwealth v. Phillips

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 1, 1895

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1895-01-01

Indictment, in three counts, for rape on Lizzie Berkman, Sarah Marcus, and Rosa Finklestein, on April 19, 1894; said Lizzie,. Sarah, and Rosa each being alleged to be under sixteen years of age. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Bond, J., the jury returned a verdict of assault with intent to rape Lizzie Berkman and Sarah Marcus, and not guilty on the count charging a rape on Rosa Finklestein. The defendant alleged exceptions, in substance as follows.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Stevenson · Hill v. Eldridge

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Age”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1895-01-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently November 2007

18 state decisions — followed in 10 states

60189519001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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 exception to the refusal of the court to allow a witness for the defence to testify to a statement which had already been testified to upon cross-examination by a witness examined for the prosecution, is not argued upon the defendant’s brief, and is waived.

¶22. The defendant’s contention that the testimony of the children as to their own ages was incompetent, because hearsay, is unsound. Such testimony has been repeatedly held competent. See Hill v. Eldridge, 126 Mass. 234, and cases cited; also Commonwealth v. Stevenson, 142 Mass. 466.

¶33. There was no error in the instruction that to determine the age of the children the jury might take into consideration the appearance of the children in connection with their testimony. Whether their appearance tended to corroborate or to disprove their testimony is not stated, and in either case the appearance of a witness is a proper element for the consideration of a jury in weighing his testimony.

¶4*5064. The question to the mother of one of the children, whether her child complained to her “ of what this man Phillips had done,” was improper in form, because it introduced the name of the accused, and it would no doubt have been excluded if objection had been made to the question upon that ground. But no such objection is shown to have been made. The objection is not shown to have called the attention of the presiding justice to the point now raised; nor was a request made to withdraw the question and the answer from the consideration of the jury. The answer was a simple affirmative coupled with the statement of the times when complaint was made by the child, and the exception must be overruled. Exceptions overruled.

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