Com. v. Morrisey
| Decision Date | 06 December 1892 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. MORRISEY. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
C.N. Harris, Second Asst. Atty. Gen., for the Commonwealth.
Fred V Fuller, for defendant.
The defendant contends that under St.1891, c. 427, he cannot be sentenced for drunkenness, and that the law is unconstitutional. In those parts to which his contention relates the statute differs from previous laws principally in giving an arrested person an opportunity to show, if he can that he has not been arrested twice for drunkenness within the 12 months next preceding, or that, having been so arrested, he has been tried and acquitted in one of the cases. If he shows this, he may properly be discharged without a trial, and his case may be placed on file. There is no doubt of the constitutional authority of the legislature in the exercise of the police power of the commonwealth, to enact a law providing for the punishment of drunkenness. The act referred to makes drunkenness punishable by the courts. The power to make a complaint and obtain a conviction does not depend on the arrest of the offender by an officer without a warrant while he is intoxicated, but it is the object of the law, when a complaint is made, and the offender is brought into court, to enable him to obtain his release without a trial if he can satisfy the court or magistrate that he has not been treated as an offender against this statute twice before within the 12 months next preceding, and, if the court or magistrate deems it proper, to release him. Under this law, as under previous statutes, the first offense of drunkenness is punishable if the case proceeds regularly to a trial on the complaint, but a way is opened whereby the defendant may have the prosecution suspended, and be released in the discretion of the court. The provision is that "his case may be placed on file." Now, a case placed on file is not necessarily finally disposed of, but it may afterwards, if the court so orders, be taken from the files, and tried in the usual way. This statute, therefore, does not undertake to interfere with the power of the court to find the defendant guilty, and sentence him, even after it is shown that he has not been twice before arrested for drunkenness within the 12 months next preceding; but in providing for the release of persons who have not frequently been found offending it authorizes and suggests the merciful and humane practice which the courts generally follow. At the same time it...
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