Commonwealth v. Blair

• Decision Date: 16 November 1878
• Citation: 126 Mass. 40
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Luke K. Blair
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

126 Mass. 40

Commonwealth v. Luke K. Blair

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

November 16, 1878

Hampshire. Indictment in two counts. The first count, upon which alone the defendant was convicted, charged that the defendant, on December 5, 1876, at Pelham, "unlawfully and maliciously did thrust a certain instrument, the name of which is to the jurors aforesaid unknown, into the body and womb of one Mary M. Wilson, then and there being pregnant with child, with intent thereby then and there to cause the said Mary M. Wilson to miscarry and prematurely bring forth from her body the said child with which she was then and there pregnant."

At the trial in the Superior Court, before Gardner, J., the government offered evidence tending to show that Mrs. Wilson had a miscarriage, at Pelham, on December 7, 1876, resulting in her death on December 16, 1876, and that, after death cuts, wounds and bruises were found in her womb, caused by some instrument used therein with violence.

The government also offered evidence that the defendant, who resided in Holyoke, was, on December 5, 1876, taken to Pelham by the husband of Mrs. Wilson, and passed the night at the house of Wilson, returning to Holyoke on the next day; that he said to the officer, when arrested, that he did not think Wilson would have gone back on him; and that he attempted to escape trial by secretly going to Canada after a former trial.

The defendant testified that he was a practising physician and surgeon at Holyoke, denied that he procured any abortion on Mrs. Wilson, and explained the occasion of his visit to Pelham. Upon cross-examination; he was asked if he had not at the time of the alleged offence, an instrument for procuring abortions, and he answered that he had never had any such. He was then asked if he did not have one at the time that a Mrs. Myrick was at his office in Holyoke, at a time prior to December 5, 1876, and he said that he never had any then or at any other time. The government, after the defendant's testimony was in, called Mrs. Myrick as a witness, and offered to show that, in July or August, 1876 the defendant had in his possession an instrument adapted to the purpose of procuring abortions, which instrument, the government contended, could have made the wounds found in the womb of Mrs. Wilson, and was evidence tending to show that the defendant had an instrument by means of which the wounds might have been caused at the...