Case ID: mass_1/html/0108-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth versus John Chabbock.
    Confessions of guilt obtained by promises of favor not admissible in evidence.
    The defendant was indicted for breaking and entering a warehouse, and stealing therein.
    He pleaded not guilty.
    In this case, the Attorney-General (Sullivan) offered to prove the confession of the defendant, made (to the presecutor, whose goods had been stolen) after the arrest of the defendant, and his being ordered to recognize (by the justice) to appear at this Court. But it appearing that what the defendant had acknowledged was drawn from him under a promise of favor to be shown him by the prosecutor, the Court would not admit the evidence. The counsel for the defendant offered to prove, by a witness present, that another person had owned to the witness that he had stolen some of the articles mentioned in the indictment. The Court would not admit it, saying it was no more than hearsay. If a person other than the defendant had stolen the goods, it was undoubtedly competent to the defendant to prove the fact, in exculpation of himself; but trot by the mode of proof now offered.
   (Strong, Sedgwick, Sewall, and Thacker, justices present.)

————for the defendant.

[Vide 2 Russ. Crim. 644 — 654.—Ed.]