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90 Mass. 580

Commonwealth v. Cashman

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1864

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1864-09-15

Indictment for being a common seller of intoxicating liquors. At the trial in the superior court, before Wilkinson, J., the government, to sustain the indictment, relied upon proof of sales of ale, gin and whiskey by the glass, in the defendants’ dwelling-house, to be there drunk by the purchasers. The defendants, after 'raising the same questions which were taken in Commonwealth í.

Decided 1864-09-15

Metcalf, J.

¶1Although it was wrongly ruled, at the trial, that it was not incumbent on the Commonwealth to prove want of authority in the defendants, under our laws, to sell intoxicating liquors; Commonwealth v. Livermore, 2 Allen, 292; yet that ruling did the defendants no harm. For it appears, on the bill of exceptions, that there was proof of sales, by the defendants, of ale, gin and whiskey (which are intoxicating) by the glass, to be drunk in their dwelling-house. This proof sustained the burden which was on the Commonwealth ; for it conclusively showed that those sales were unauthorized; as no one can have authority, under our laws, so to sell liquors. Commonwealth v. Livermore, 4 Allen, 434. Since the St. of 1864, c. 121, the burden of proving want of authority to sell intoxicating liquors is no longer on the Commonwealth.

¶2*581The other exceptions are the same that were taken and overruled in Commonwealth v. O'Donnell, ante, 548.

¶3Exceptions overruled.

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