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83 Me. 310

State v. Minnehan

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided April 7, 1891

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1891-04-07

<p> Intoxicating Liquors. Warrant. Description of premises. Pleading. </p> <p>A liquor warrant against a dwelling-house sufficiently describes the premises by an averment that the house is occupied by the defendant, and situated on the east side of Blake street; the house being in fact so occupied and situated •east of Blake street, but not adjoining it; although there be another house between that of the defendant and the street, and access to defendant’s house be by an alley running from the street past the other tenement.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1891-04-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently March 1994

2 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

4018911900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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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Peters, C. J.

¶1Tin’s is a search and seizure process wherein the premises to be searched are described as follows: "The dwelling-house and its appurtenances occupied by her, said Elizabeth Minnehan, and situated on the east side of Blake Street, in said Lewiston.”

¶2In the trial, evidence was introduced tending to show that the premises searched were those actually occupied by the. defendant as a dwelling-house; that said dwelling-house was east of Blake Street; that said house was not next to Blake Street on its easterly side; but that between said house and said Blake Street was another house, not occupied by the defendant, and a space of about twelve feet between the two houses ; that the approaches to the dwelling-house occupied by the defendant were by a passage or alley-way running to it from Blake Street; and that all the doors of the premises searched opened on to the alley way.

¶3The counsel contended that there was a fatal variance between the description in the warrant and the description of premises proved. The judge ruled, substantially, that the jury would be authorized to find that there was no variance, if the evidence be believed.

¶4There is really no variance. At most, there is a slight diminution of description in the warrant, not misleading at all. The warrant does not necessarily call for a location of the house immediately upon the street, but on the east side of it. It is *312on the east side of Blake Street, and is the house occupied by the respondent. The description as a whole would lead the officer serving the warrant to the correct house. The description would have been practically perfect had these words been added to it, "and connected with Blake Street by an alley running from the house thereto.” But that fact was easily ascertainable upon an examination of the locality.

¶5 Exceptions overruled.

Walton, Virgin, Libbey, Haskell and White house, JJ., concurred.
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