Case Name: Commonwealth vs. Mary A. Frates
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1860-10
Citations: 16 Gray 236
Docket Number: 
Parties: Commonwealth vs. Mary A. Frates.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 82
Pages: 236–237

Head Matter:
Commonwealth vs. Mary A. Frates.
A complaint charging the commission of an offence on a certain day, and from that day to the day of the date of receiving this complaint, and certified by a magistrate to have been received and sworn to on a certain later day, is a sufficient charge of the offence during the whole time.
Complaint for being a lewd, wanton and lascivious person on the 1st of August 1860, “ and from that day to the day of the date of receiving this complaint.” The complaint bore no date, except in the certificate of a justice of the peace, after the signature of the complainant, that it was “ received and sworn to on the twenty-ninth day of August in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty.”
At the trial in the superior court in Bristol, Vose, J. admitted evidence of lewd speeches and conduct on different days between the 1st and the 29th of August, and refused to confine the proof to the 1st of August or any other single day. The defendant was convicted, and alleged exceptions.
J. Brown, for the defendant.
S. H. Phillips, (Attorney General,) for the Commonwealth.

Opinion:
By the Court.
The time is alleged with sufficient certainty. The complainant knew when the complaint was received, because the act of making and signing it was his own act, and constituted a reception of the complaint within the meaning of the law. Exceptions overruled.