Case ID: mass_116/html/0339-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Gray, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth vs. John Brown.
    Essex.
    November 4.
    5, 1874.
    Ames & Devests, JJ., absent.
    Where an indictment duly charges the commission of an offence at a time before it was found, and the date of its presentment appears by the record of the court, an error in the date of the caption of the indictment is immaterial.
    Indictment, duly averring that the defendant at Lynn on October 1, 1873, and on divers other days and times between that day and the day of the finding of the indictment, kept and maintained a tenement used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors.
    The caption was as follows: “ Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Essex, to wit: At the Superior Court begun and holden at Salem within and for said county of Essex on the fourth Monday of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three.”
    By the minutes of the clerk upon the docket of January term 1874 it appeared that the indictment was presented by the grand jury and filed in court on February 2, 1874.
    The defendant, before the jury were empanelled, moved to quash the indictment, because no offence was set forth therein, and because the offence charged therein was alleged to have been committed after the date and finding of the indictment; and at the trial objected to the introduction of any evidence, for the same reasons. But Lord, J., overruled the objections, and admitted evidence tending to show that the defendant was guilty of the offence charged on October 3, 1873. The defendant, being found guilty, alleged exceptions.
    
      
      W. D. Northend & C. A. Benjamin, for the defendant.
    
      C. R. Train, Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
   Gray, C. J.

The indictment duly charging the commission of an offence at a time before it was found, and the date of its presentment appearing by the record, the error in the caption was immaterial. Commonwealth v. Hines, 101 Mass. 33. Commonwealth v. Smith, 108 Mass. 486. Exceptions overruled.