State v. Warren

Decided July 1, 1851

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1851-07-01

On exceptions from Nisi Prius. Indictment for burning a barn, on the 18th March, 1849, within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse. It appeared upon the trial that the house had been occupied for keeping persons infected by the small pox, but that they had all been removed from the house three or four weeks before the barn was burnt; that during that period of three or four weeks the house had not been occupied by any person, as a dwellinghouse.

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

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1851-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 1982

3 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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¶1The inquiry should not have been, what the house was designed for, or was capable of being, but whether it was then a dwellinghouse.

¶2To constitute a building a dwellinghouse, it must be a habitation for man, and usually occupied by some person lodging in it at night, though such occupant may for a time be absent, leaving furniture therein, with a,n intention of returning. 4 Black. Com. 224; 1 Leech, 185; 2 Russell, 914, 922.

¶3Under an intimation from the Court that the instructions were erroneous, and could not be sustained, the Attorney General entered a nol. pros., and the defendant was discharged.