Commonwealth v. Armstrong
This text of 73 Mass. 49 (Commonwealth v. Armstrong) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
It is settled that this indictment is in proper legal form. Commonwealth v. Tower, 8 Met. 527. Commonwealth v. Elwell, 1 Gray, 464. And, as was said by Lord Ellen-borough, in Rex v. Hunt, 2 Campb. 685, “ it is invariably enough to prove so much of the indictment as shows that the defendant has committed a substantive crime therein specified.”
It is also settled that proof of three sales on the same day is sufficient to render the seller liable to the penalty of being a common seller. Commonwealth v. Rumrill, 1 Gray, 388. Evidence would have been admissible, that the defendant made sales on divers other days, between the first of July and the day of the finding of the indictment; but it was unnecessary. If such proof had been given, it would not have enhanced the penalty. And this conviction will be a bar to any other indictment of the defendant for being a common seller between the 1st of July 1855 and the day when this indictment was found.
Exceptions overruled.
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack
73 Mass. 49, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-armstrong-mass-1856.