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74 Mass. 480

Commonwealth v. Timothy

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1857

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1857-09-15

Complaint on St. 1855, c. 215, § 24, averring that the defendant, on the 28th of July 1856, at Northampton, “ did keep intoxicating liquors, with intent to sell the same in said commonwealth,” he not being authorized under St. 1855, c. 215, or by any legal authority whatever, “ against the peace of said commonwealth, and contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided.” At the trial in the court of common pleas in Hampshire, before Bishop, J., a witness…

Decided 1857-09-15

By the Court.

¶11. Whether a particular article is gin is not a subject requiring an expert, but a matter of general knowledge. If the witness did not know, he might say so.

¶22. The evidence of the jugs which had contained liquor was rightly admitted. They tended to show that the defendant kept liquor, which was a necessary step in proving that she kept liquor unlawfully.

¶3*4823. If the liquor sold was not in fact intoxicating, still, if it was within the liquors enumerated in the first section of the statute, the keeping of it with intent to sell was, by the terms of the statute, to be punished in the same manner as if it was intoxicating. And such an enactment is within the discretion of the legislature to pass.

¶44. The liquors aré described in the complaint in the manner which has always been practised in similar cases. Commonwealth v. Conant, 6 Gray, 482.

¶5Exceptions and motion in arrest overruled.

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