Case ID: mass_108/html/0289-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Couet.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth vs. Thomas Roach.
    On the trial of an indictment for an assault, evidence that the defendant had a knife in hie possession a short time before the alleged offence, and what was then its character and condition, is competent to corroborate evidence that he made the assault with a knife.
    Indictment for assaulting and stabbing Charles F. Coleman with a knife at Berkley on November 29, 1870. Trial in the superior court, before Reed, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions which referred to the indictment and continued as follows :
    “ The evidence showed that the defendant and Coleman had ah altercation and fought together, and that during the fight the defendant struck and wounded Coleman in the leg with a knife. This occurred at about six or seven o’clock in the evening. At the trial, William K. Evans was allowed to testify, against the defendant’s objection, that during the afternoon of and before the alleged assault, while the defendant was in the shop at which he worked, he requested the witness to, and he did, file the heel of the blade of a jack-knife for him, so that it would set back further when opened, and would not shut so readily when the point was used. The Commonwealth offered evidence to show that the defendant used a knife in the fight; but no other evidence that this particular knife was used (except that the defendant sharpened it on the same afternoon) or that he expressed any intention to use it for that purpose. The defendant was convicted, and excepts to the ruling admitting said testimony.”
    
      J. Brown, for the defendant.
    
      0. Allen, Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
   By the Couet.

Evidence that the defendant was possessed of a knife a short time before the affray, and also evidence of its character and condition, tended to corroborate the other evidence that the injury was inflicted with a knife.

Exceptions overruled.