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97 Mass. 580

Commonwealth v. McCann

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 15, 1867

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1867-11-15

Indictment for burning a barn in Brighton, occupied by-David P. Merrill. Trial, in the superior court, before Ames, C. J., who signed the following bill of exceptions : “ At the tria], the burning of the barn was proved to have taken place in the night-time in October 1866; and evidence was offered tending to prove animosity towards Merrill on the part of the defendant, and the use of threatening language to and about him in the afternoon of the day of the fire.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1867-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently January 1978

11 state decisions

20186718701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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Foster, J.

¶11. We find no evidence of any inducement to make the confession introduced in evidence, held' out by the persons to whom it was made or any one else.

¶22. The fact that the bam had been burned was proved by other evidence. There was evidence of the hostility of the defendant towards the occupant of the property destroyed, and of her threats against him within a few hours before the fire. This was not therefore a case requiring the judge to instruct the jury whether uncorroborated confessions will warrant a conviction. Commonwealth v. Tarr, 4 Allen, 315.

¶33. The admission of the district attorney that an absent witness, if present, would testify in a particular manner, plainly did not admit the truth of the testimony he would have given.

¶44. The refusal to give the instructions asked for on the subject of other fires in the same town was correct. It by no means appeared that this burning was one of a series of similar fires kindled by other persons than the defendant. This request assumed a state of facts wholly unsupported by the evidence.

¶5Exceptions overruled.

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