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77 Mass. 447

Commonwealth v. Pierce

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided October 15, 1858

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1858-10-15

<p>On the trial of an indictment for adultery, evidence of acts of improper familiarity between the defendant and the person with whom the adultery wáfc alleged to have been committed, prior and subsequent to the time and occasion relied upon as the time and occasion of the offence charged, was admitted without objection, and the judge instructed the jury that evidence of such prior acts was competent, but that evidence of such subsequent acts was not. Held, that the defendant had no ground of exception.</p> <p>On the trial of an indictment for adultery, the defendant requested that the evidence of acts committed by the defendant with the person with whom the adultery was alleged to have been committed might be confined to the time and occasion on which the Commonwealth intended to rely as the time and occasion of the offence charged, and the judge declined so to do; but the bill of exceptions did not show that any evidence of any subsequent acts was admitted. Held, that the defendant had no ground of exception.</p>

Decided 1858-10-15

Dewey, J.

¶1No objection v/as taken to the admission of the testimony of Benjamin Thrasher and the two other witnesses, tending to establish the first count in this indictment, at the time when it was given; and therefore, as to that part of the case, the only inquiry open relates to the subsequent ruling of the presiding judge upon that evidence. That was certainly sufficiently guarded, the instruction being that evidence of prior acts of improper familiarity between the defendant and Mrs. Thrasher, previous to the time and occasion relied upon by the government in support of the count, was competent and admissible evidence in corroboration of the evidence of Benjamin Thrasher, and as tending to show the disposition of the parties to commit the alleged crime ; but that all such acts subsequent to the occasion relied upon by the government in support of the count were inadmissible, and were not to be regarded as evidence.

¶2As to the second count, under which the government relied upon an act of adultery in the summer of 1856, and to support which the evidence of Ellen Martin was offered, it does not appear from the bill of exceptions that the acts testified to in *450corroboration were acts occurring subsequent to that relied upon as the substantive charge. The prayer of the defendant for instructions that all evidence of other acts committed at other times and places was incompetent and inadmissible was clearly wrong. Commonwealth v. Merriam, 14 Pick. 518. Instead of the ruling asked, the presiding judge very properly gave that already stated as applicable to both counts, and which directly excluded from the jury all evidence of subsequent acts.

¶3We perceive no ground for maintaining the exceptions in the present case. Exceptions overruled.

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