Case ID: mass_11/html/0400-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Parker, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Jonathan Spear versus Simeon Alden and Others.
    By the late statutes, a prisoner for debt, having given bond for the liberty of the yard, commits no escape by being, in the night-time, in the public streets within the exterior limits of the prison-yard.
    Debt on a bond dated the 7th day of May, 1813, conditioned that the said Alden, who had been on that day committed to prison on an execution in favor of the plaintiff, should continue a true prisoner within the limits of the jail-yard, without committing any manner of escape.
    It was agreed by the parties that, after the execution of the said bond, the said Alden did, at sundry times before he was legally discharged from prison, go out of the apartments occupied by him, in the night-time, and was in the public streets, and in houses other than those apartments, and within the exterior limits of the jail-yard; but he was in no instance known to be without the said exterior limits.
    If, upon these facts, the Court should be of opinion that Alden ■ had committed an escape, within the true intent and meaning of the laws on this subject, then judgment was to be rendered for the plaintiff for such sum as he was by law entitled to recover; otherwise he was to become nonsuit.
    
      Richardson for the plaintiff.
    
      Whiting for the defendants.
   The opinion of the Court was delivered by

Parker, C. J.

The late acts of the legislature regulating prisons within this commonwealth have reduced the imprisonment for debt, from that salvo et arcta custodia required by the common law, to a mere nominal confinement of the person of the debtor. With the policy or impolicy of this system we have nothing to do.

The act passed June 27, 1811, is clear and explicit with regard to the effect of a bond given pursuant to it. If the prisoner confines himself within the exterior limits of the yard, as established by the Courts of Sessions, he is at liberty * to go [ *445 J where and when he will, within those limits, either by day or by night. The bond sued in the present action was executed after the passing of that act; and although its condition varies from what is thereby intended to be the condition of bonds for the liberty of the prison-yard, yet the variance is immaterial, and the debtor was entitled to all the indulgences allowed by that act. It being agreed that he at no time passed without the exterior limits of the prison-yard, there is no breach of the condition, and the plaintiff must be nonsuit.

Plaintiff nonsuit. 
      
      
        Stat. 1809, c. 33.—1810, c. 116—1811, c. 69, 85, 167.