Case Name: Commonwealth versus Jeremiah Moulton
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1812-05
Citations: 8 Tyng 30
Docket Number: 
Parties: * Commonwealth versus Jeremiah Moulton.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 9
Pages: 35–37

Head Matter:
* Commonwealth versus Jeremiah Moulton.
The party from whom goods have been stolen is a competent witness on the trial of the offender, as to any facts within his knowledge.
The defendant, being convicted before Thatcher, J., at the last October term in this county, of breaking and entering the shop of John Low, and stealing therefrom, moved that the verdict might be set aside, and a new trial be granted, because the said Low, the prosecutor, and the owner of the goods supposed to be stolen, was admitted as a witness on the trial, and did testify, not only to his property in the said goods, and that they were lost or stolen, “but. also to all the facts of the manner of losing and of finding the same, and the means thereof; and also the means and manner of breaking and entering the said shop, and to all other circumstances at large, tending in any way within the knowledge of the witness to the conviction of the defendant, in the same manner as any other witnesses; notwithstanding the objection of the defendant’s counsel to the admission of the said witness so to testify.”
Holmes and Emery,
in support of the motion, conceded that, from the necessity of the case, the owner of the goods stolen must be admitted to testify to such facts as are naturally presumed to be exclusively within his knowledge; as in actions on the statutes of Hue' and Cry, the party robbed is allowed to testify only as to such facts as are necessarily within his own knowledge. So, in prosecutions in this state against the putative father of a bastard child, the mother is received as a witness only to such facts as she alone can be presumed privy to. In Rex vs. Whiting, Holt, C. J., refused to receive a witness who might possibly be benefited by a conviction of the defendant for a cheat, merely by the influence the conviction might have on a jury in a civil action, which might be brought upon the note in question. The interest in this case was direct and positive; for by the conviction the witness becomes entitled not only to restoration of the goods stolen, if they can be found, but also, by statute of 1804, c. 142, § 16, * in case they are not restored, to satisfaction out of the future earnings of the convict; and by § 14, to a recompense out of the county treasury for his labor and expense in the-prosecution.
Morton (Attorney-General) for the commonwealth.
2 Mass. Rep. 441, Drown vs. Simpson.
1 Salk. 283.

Opinion:
By the Court.
This motion cannot prevail. The objection has been often made, and as often overruled. When the party from whom goods were stolen was by law entitled to treble the value, he was always received as a competent witness as to all pertinent facts, That was a higher interest than this in the case at bar. The practice is too well established to be shaken at this day.
Motion overruled.
[Vide The State vs. Vaughan, 1 Bay. Rep. 282, contra.—Ed.][
[At common law, when a conviction will enure directly and immediately to the benefit of a prosecutor, he is an incompetent witness. — Howard vs. Shipley, 4 East)
Rep. 180.--Rex vs. Bevan & Others, Ry. & Mood. 242. — Commonwealth vs. Frost, 5 Mass. Rep. 53. — And where a statute gives.a specific remedy to a party injured, he is as much disqualified for a witness in a criminal prosecution, as if he sought the remedy by a civil action. —Starkie, Ev. Part 4. p. 774. — B. N. P. 289. But in many cases, the party injured, or prosecutor, who may derive a benefit from the conviction, is either expressly or by implication rendered competent, by virtue of the act respecting the offence, or the prosecution of it. But in the statute cited by the prisoner's counsel in the principal case, there is no express provision to that effect, nor any thing from which it may be very clearly inferred. — Ed.]