Commonwealth v. Beck

• Decision Date: 22 November 1904
• Citation: 72 N.E. 357,187 Mass. 15
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. BECK. SAME v. MURPHY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

187 Mass. 15

72 N.E. 357

COMMONWEALTH

v.BECK.

SAME

v.MURPHY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Nov. 22, 1904.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Worcester County; Chas. W. Bell, Judge.

August Beck and one Murphy were separately convicted of transporting liquor, and except. Exceptions sustained.

The complaints under which the prosecutions were brought read as follows: ‘Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To the police court of Fitchburg, in the county of Worcester and commonwealth of Massachusetts, H. L. Flint, of Fitchburg, in said county, in behalf of said commonwealth, on oath complains that August Beck, of Fitchburg, in said county, heretofore, to wit, on the 6th day of July in the year nineteen hundred and four, at Fitchburg, in said county, unlawfully did transport for hire and reward, for delivery in said Fitchburg, intoxicating liquor, said Fitchburg then being a city where licenses of first five classes to sell intoxicating liquors are not granted, and said August Beck not then and there regularly and lawfully conducting a general express business. The said complainant believes said defendant will not appear upon a summons. He therefore prays said defendant may be apprehended and held to answer to this complaint, and further dealt with relative to the same, according to law, and that the complainant and * * * may be summoned to testify what they know relative to the subject-matter thereof before said court.’

Rockwood Hoar, Dist. Atty. and Geo. S. Taft, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

David I. Walsh, Thos. L. Walsh, John E. Sullivan, and David F. O'Connell, for defendants.

BRALEY, J.

No offense known to the common law is described in these complaints, and, if they can be sustained, it must be on the ground that they charge a misdemeanor under Rev. Laws, c. 100, § 49. This section, in substance, was originally St. 1897, p. 249, c. 271, § 1, which was before this court for construction in Com. v. Intoxicating Liquors, 172 Mass. 311, 52 N. E. 389, when it was said: ‘The act was manifestly intended to meet some difficulties which had been encountered by the government in the prosecution of common carriers for illegally keeping of intoxicating liquors, and to make it more difficult for the guilty to escape detection, when setting up the fraudulent defense that the liquors found in the possession of the carrier were for delivery by him as such to some person.’ The general rule of criminal pleading that it is sufficient to charge a statutory offense in the language of the statute cannot be applied, for there is no allegation that each defendant as a common carrier, or as a person lawfully conducting a general express business, had violated the provisions of this section. Com. v. Ashton, 125 Mass. 384, 385. The offense described is that each defendant ‘not then and there regularly and lawfully conducting a general express business' brought and delivered intoxicating liquor for hire or...