Commonwealth v. Bressant
| Decision Date | 25 January 1879 |
| Citation | 126 Mass. 246 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Andrew Bressant |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Suffolk. Indictment charging the defendant, on September 9 1878, at Boston, with the larceny of "divers promissory notes of the amount and of the value in all of nine hundred and fourteen dollars, a more particular description of which is to the jurors unknown, of the property, goods and chattels of one Nicholas Moens."
At October term 1878 of the Superior Court, the defendant filed a plea in bar, the substance of which appears in the opinion to which the government demurred. Putnam, J., sustained the demurrer and overruled the plea. The defendant was then tried; the jury returned a verdict of guilty; and the defendant alleged exceptions to the ruling sustaining the demurrer.
Exceptions overruled.
G. W. Searle & J. W. Mahan, for the defendant.
C. R. Train, Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
The only question which the defendant now presents for our consideration is whether his special plea in bar is a good plea of a former acquittal of the same offence charged in the indictment.
The plea, after alleging that a complaint was made against the defendant before the Municipal Court of the city of Boston, charging him with the larceny of divers promissory notes the property of Nicholas Moens, and that a warrant thereon was issued upon which he was brought before said court and arraigned on the 4th day of October, when he pleaded not guilty, avers that "the case was continued until the tenth day of the present month of October, when he was again brought before said Municipal Court, and said complaint was dismissed, and he was lawfully discharged and acquitted on said complaint of the same offence with which he is now charged in said indictment."
This is not a good plea of a former acquittal. The leading allegation is, that the "said complaint was dismissed." If the words that follow, "and he was lawfully discharged and acquitted on said complaint," are to be construed as a substantive allegation of a former acquittal, it is inconsistent with and repugnant to the other allegation. The effect of dismissing a complaint without a trial is like that of quashing or entering a nolle prosequi of an indictment. By neither of these is the defendant acquitted of the offence charged against him, but he is only exempted fro liability on that...
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