Commonwealth v. Bedrosian

• Decision Date: 01 March 1924
• Citation: 247 Mass. 573,142 N.E. 778
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. BEDROSIAN.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

247 Mass. 573

142 N.E. 778

COMMONWEALTH

v.BEDROSIAN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

March 1, 1924.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Nelson P. Brown, Judge.

John Bedrosian was found guilty of murder in the second degree, and brings exceptions. Exceptions overruled.

E. J. Tierney and M. G. Rogers, both of Lowell, for defendant.

A. K. Reading, Dist. Atty., and R. T. Bushnell, Asst. Dist. Atty., both of Boston, for the Commonwealth.

CROSBY, J.

This is an indictment charging the defendant with murder. He was convicted of murder in the second degree. The case is before us on his exceptions to the exclusion of two questions put by his counsel to a witness called by him, and to the charge ‘in so far as it stated that the intentional unlawful killing of one human being by another carries with it malice, and in so far as it stated that if the killing was proved to be intentional that, in and of itself imported malice.’

There was evidence that the defendant had stated that, while he was in the company of the deceased in the woods, they had been set upon by four young men accompanied by two young girls, and that he and the deceased had been attacked; that he had made his escape, and had called certain persons to the scene, informing them that his companion was in the woods and was being killed by the four young men and the two girls. The body of the deceased, for whose murder the defendant was indicted and tried, was found in the woods. One Lynch, a police officer, called as a witness for the commonwealth, testified on cross-examination that he had not stated to any person that he had been informed that an automobile containing certain young persons had been seen near the place of the crime on the day it was alleged to have been committed by the defendant. One Woodies, a newspaper reporter, was called as a witness by the defendant for the purpose of contradicting the testimony of Lynch and to affect his credibility, and testified in substance that Lynch had told him that he (Lynch) had been informed that some one had seen an automobile near the scene of the crime on the date it was committed. On his redirect examination Woodies was asked the following questions, which, upon objection by the district attorney, were excluded:

‘Does your report, the nature of your report, of the case in the Lowell Sun have any effect on your being sure, or otherwise, as to whether this conversation actually occurred or not?’

‘Did you write an account of this conversation which-rather did you write an account of the statement which you have testified to that Officer Lynch made, in the Lowell Sun on the day that you were-you made this investigation?’

The exceptions to the exclusion of the questions must be overruled.

‘The witness could not carry his testimony higher than to state what, as he said, he remembered specifically concerning the particular occasion. That was final, if believed. It was a matter of discretion whether and how far the court...