Case Name: Commonwealth versus James Ross
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1807-03
Citations: 1 Tyng 373
Docket Number: 
Parties: * Commonwealth versus James Ross.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 2
Pages: 336–337

Head Matter:
* Commonwealth versus James Ross.
An indictment for uttering a forged promissory note need not set forth the date of the note, nor the time when the money was made payable.
The indictment was found at the last November term, and contained two counts, 1st. It charges that the defendant, “at Boston, in said county, with force and arms, on the 21st day of June, in the present year, did willingly and deceitfully cause, or procure and abet and command, the forging and making a certain promissory note in writing for money, purporting to be a true and genuine promissory note of one Salisbury Blackmer to the said James Ross, or his order, for the sum of 500 dollars, and dated in September, A. D. 1805, with an intent the said £. B. to wrong and defraud.”
The 2d count was for uttering and publishing the same note with an intent to defraud certain persons named in the indictment.
Upon trial before Parker, J., a general verdict of guilty was given ; after which L. Richardson filed a motion in arrest of judgment, and set forth six several reasons in support of his motion, which was at this term submitted to the opinion of the Court without argument, Richardson observing that his principal reliance was on the fourth reason, which was as follows — “ because the note referred to in said indictment is not sufficiently described and set forth, so as to warrant and support a judgment thereon; nor does it appeal with certainty, on the face of said indictment, when the said note was dated, nor when the same was payable.”
The Attorney-General
said, the reason that the note was not more particularly described was that the defendant, when arrested, swallowed the note, and thus put it out of the power of the government to give a more particular description of it. But he apprehended that the second count was sufficient to support the verdict. The uttering and publishing is the gist of the offence.

Opinion:
By the Court.
He may be sentenced on the second count. And he was afterwards brought into Court and sentenced to thirty days' solitary imprisonment, and two years' confinement at hard labor in the state prison,
Commonwealth vs. Ward, post, 397.— Same vs. Bailey, 1 Mass. Rep. 62.— Same vs. Stevens, 1 Mass. Rep. 203. — Sed vide Commomoealth vs. Houghton, 8 Mass. Rep. 107.—2 Russell on Crimes, 359, 360, 2d Loud. ed. —Archb. Crim. Pl.41.