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97 Mass. 114

Commonwealth v. Graves

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1867

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1867-09-15

Indictment for being a common seller of intoxicating liquors. At the trial in the superior court, before Rockwell, J., the only witnesses for the government were two state deputy constables, and one Wotton, who acted in concert with them and under their direction.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1867-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently September 1931

6 state decisions

2018671870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Bigelow, ' C. J.

¶1The instructions were in all respects apt and proper, and in conformity to previous decisions of this court. Commonwealth v. Willard, 22 Pick. 476. Commonwealth v. Downing, 4 Gray, 29.

¶2No question seems to have been raised at the tidal as to the elements necessary to constitute a legal sale. The presumption is that these were sufficiently stated to the jury. The real point which seems to have been made by the counsel for the defend*, ant was, that three sales were not proved, if it appeared that the liquor was purchased by the witnesses under a preconcerted plan in pursuance of which it was called for and delivered at short intervals, although the ordinary elements constituting three distinct sales were also proved. But such an instruction could not have been properly given. The ruling of the court on this point *117was responsive to the prayer submitted by the counsel for the defendant, and submitted in proper form to the jury the question of fact whether three sales had been proved by the testimony to their satisfaction. Commonwealth v. Kimball, 7 Met. 308. Commonwealth v. Very, 12 Gray, 124.

¶3Exceptions overruled.

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