Case ID: mass_107/html/0211-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bi the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth vs. Thomas Ackland.
    At the trial of an indictment for illegally keeping and maintaining a tenement in Boston, the jury are authorized to infer that witnesses who testified that the tenement was on India Wharf meant India Wharf in Boston.
    Indictment, in Suffolk, for keeping and maintaining a tenement in Boston for the illegal keeping and sale of intoxicating liquors. At the trial in the superior court, before Wilkinson, J., the defendant was convicted, and alleged exceptions.
    It appeared from the bill of exceptions, that several witnesses testified that the defendant kept a liquor shop “ at No. 4 India Wharf; ” that there was no other evidence of the locality of the defendant’s tenement; that the defendant requested a ruling that on the evidence he was entitled to an acquittal; and that the judge refused so to rule.
    
      J°. F. Guiney, (J. D. Fallon with him,) for the defendant.
    
      J. 0. Davis, Assistant Attorney General, (0. Allen, Attorney General, with him,) for the.Commonwealth.
   Bi the Court.

It is now contended that, as the witnesses at the trial only spoke of the defendant’s tenement as being at No. 4 India Wharf, there was not sufficient evidence to authorize the jury to find that the place was in Boston. This objection was not distinctly stated at the trial; and if it had been, the jury would have been authorized to find that India Wharf in Boston was referred to, rather than some other place of that name, if there be such a place, in some other city or town.

jExceptions overruled.