89 Mass. 531
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided November 15, 1863
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1863-11-15
Complaint for being a common seller of intoxicating liquor. At the trial in the superior court, before Putnam, J., one Coffee testified to a single purchase of rum from the defendant, taken from a cask in a room in the defendant’s house, which room was fitted up in some respects as a bar-room. Two other witnesses testified to two purchases of beer there, and the question whether it was intoxicating was left to the jury.
Decided 1863-11-15
¶11. The court rightly declined to instruct the jury as requested by the defendant. It was for them and not for the court to decide, in the first instance, whether the evidence warranted her conviction. Commonwealth v. Hughes, 2 Allen, 518. Greenfield Bank v. Crafts, 4 Allen, 456.
¶22. The instructions given to the .jury were, in legal effect, precisely like those which were decided to be correct in Commonwealth v. Mahony, 14 Gray, 46. Exceptions overruled.