Case ID: mass_88/html/0595-01.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 Hutchinson.
    A complaint for the illegal transportation of intoxicating liquors from place to place m a particular city contains a sufficient description of the place in which the offence was committed.
    Complaint. The third count, on which alone the defendant was convicted, set forth that he, on a certain day, “ at the city of Worcester, in said county [of Worcester], did convey certain intoxicating liquors from place to place in said city, he the said Hutchinson then and there having reasonable cause to believe that the same were intended to be sold contrary to the provisions of chapter eighty-six of the General Statutes,” &c. A motion in arrest of judgment, on the ground that there was no sufficient designation of the place from which and the place to which the liquors were conveyed, having been overruled in the superior court, the defendant appealed to this court.
    
      G. F. Verry, for the defendant.
    
      Foster, A. G., for the Commonwealth.
   By the Court.

The description of the offence in the complaint is sufficiently definite to identify the particular act of transportation intended to be charged as criminal; that is, the complaint sets out the place in which the act was committed, by alleging that the liquor was carried from one place to another within the city of Worcester. In this particular, it is not open to the objection which was sustained in Commonwealth v. Reily, 9 Gray, 1, where the allegation was that the defendant conveyed intoxicating liquor from place to place within the Commonwealth. It was there intimated that an averment like the present, that it was conveyed from one place to another in a particular town or city, would be sufficient. A reasonable degree of certainty in the description of the offence, so that the accused may know the locality in which the unlawful transportation is alleged to have taken place, is all that is requisite.

Motion in arrest overruled-