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2 Mass. 138

Commonwealth v. Morse

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1806

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1806-09-15

At the last April term, the defendant was indicted for that he, at a day and place named, “ falsely, fraudulently, and deceitfully obtained, had, and kept in his possession, one certain false and forged piece of paper, purporting to be a true and genuine promissory note of hand for money, issued by a corporation duly and legally established by law under the denomination of the Richmond Bank, and which was of the tenor following, viz.: — “ Five Dollars.

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

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1806-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 1885

2 state decisions

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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.

¶1By the 4th section of the statute referred to by the Attorney-General, it is made an offence to have in possession any forged note payable to bearer, made like to any note issued by any bank established by law in this or in any of the United States, with intent to pass it as a genuine note. Neither of the notes described in the indictment is within the description given by this section, as it is alleged that the defendant well knew that no such banks existed as are named in the indictment. Therefore, if the indictment had concluded against the statute, it could not have been maintained; and it would be doing violence to all the rules of construing penal statutes, to extend the provisions of the 7th section to the notes described in this indictment. The allegations amount only to an intention to cheat, which at common law is not indictable, and the indictment does not conclude against any statute.

¶2The defendant was discharged,.

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