Case ID: me_2/html/0321-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The case of PARCHER & al.
    The Court of Common Pleas has no jurisdiction, of an offence created by statute, unless it is expressly made cognizable in that Court.
    The defendants were indicted in the Court below upon StaU 1821, ch. 168, for taking, carrying away, and converting to their owm use two logs lying upon the bank or shore' of a stream called-Dead river; this offence being made penal by that statute, and punishable by indictment in any Court of competent jurisdiction. Being convicted in this Court, to which they had appealed, they moved that the judgment be arrested, assigning divers causes, one of which was that the Court of Common Pleas had no jurisdiction of the offence.
    The Attorney 'General and H. W. Fuller,
    being called upon by the Court to support the verdict against this objection, contended that the act was a misdemeanor at common law, to which the statute only affixed a specific penalty; — and that the Court of Common Pleas had jurisdiction over offences of this sort, deducible from the old Court of quarter sessions, through the late Court of General Sessions of the peace. And they, cited Commonwealth v. Holmes, 17 Mass. 337.
    Sprague, on the other side,
    was stopped by the Court.
   Per Curiam.

It is very clear that the act charged in the indictment ivas no offence at common law, but was merely a trespass; and it falls within the principle of Commonwealth v. Knowlton, 2 Mass. 530. and for the reasons there given the judgment in this case must be arrested. The jurisdiction docs not belong to the Court below, unless expressly given; which in the present instance has not been done.