Case ID: mass_108/html/0483-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth vs. William Woolford & wife.
    The fact that the minimum penalty for an offence is within the limit to which penalties may be imposed by trial justices does not bring the offence within their jurisdiction, if the maximum penalty for it exceeds that limit.
    Trial justices have not jurisdiction of the offence of keeping common nuisances under the Gen. Sts. c. 87, §§ 6, 7.
    Indictment of William Woolford and his wife, on the Gen. Sts. c. 87, §§ 6, 7, for keeping in Wrentham on December 1,1869, and divers other days and times between that day and the first Monday of September 1870, a tenement used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors.
    The defendants pleaded to the jurisdiction of the superior court, w for that the minimum penalty for the silence set forth in the indictment is by a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment for three months, and that the subject matter of the indictment is thereby within the jurisdiction of the trial justice who bound the defendants over to this court.” The district attorney filed a general demurrer, which the court sustained, and thereupon the defendants pleaded not guilty. On the trial, the husband was found guilty, and the wife was acquitted; and he appealed to this court.
    
      C. J. Randall, for William Woolford.
    
      0. Allen, Attorney General, (J. G. Davis, Assistant Attorney General, with him,) for the Commonwealth.
   By the Court.

By the St. of 1866, e. 280, § 3, the offence alleged in the indictment was punishable by a fine' of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars, and imprisonment in the house of correction not less than three nor more than twelve months. It was therefore within the jurisdiction of the superior court, and the trial justice had no jurisdiction of it, but could only bind the defendant over for trial in the superior court. Gen. Sts. e. 114, § 6 ; c. 120, §§ 37, 45.

Judgment affirmed.