Commonwealth v. Healey
| Decision Date | 05 December 1892 |
| Citation | 32 N.E. 656,157 Mass. 455 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. HEALEY et al. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
T.J. Morrison, for plaintiffs.
C.H Harris, Second Asst. Atty. Gen., for the Commonwealth.
This is a complaint against the defendants jointly under St.1885, c 342, for being present in certain rooms occupied with apparatus and devices for the purpose of registering bets and of buying and selling pools, etc., and engaged in the business of registering bets and selling pools, upon horse races. The case is before us upon exception to a refusal to rule that there was no evidence in the case from which the jury could find any one of the defendants guilty.
Taken literally, this ruling would be wrong if there was evidence against any one of the defendants. It is admitted that the defendant Clancy might have been found to have registered a bet, and the defendant Healey to have made payments upon such bets, clearly in pursuance of a previous arrangement between themselves. In strictness, perhaps, it is not necessary to say more. But the point intended to be raised, or at least the one argued before us, was that there was no sufficient connection between the other defendants and the offense, and that the apparatus in the rooms was not apparatus for the purpose of registering bets, within the meaning of the statute. It was said that the only apparatus necessary for that purpose was a book and a pencil.
We do not think that much need be said to answer this argument or to show the joint liability of the defendants, however close the degree of connection with the offense may be required to be. The rooms were occupied for the purpose of registering bets and selling pools. There were a hundred or more people there. The defendant Healey was at the door, keeping watch and occasionally turning some one away. As we have said, the defendant Clancy sold tickets, and Healey paid the bets. The defendant Caldwell, in the next room, received through a telegraph instrument news as to the progress of the races and informed the defendants Green and Shorey, who wrote it upon a blackboard for the information of those present. The only immediate purpose of every act done by any of the defendants was the making, deciding, and paying of bets. The motive and end of all of them was to induce the public present to make more bets. Evidently the division of labor had been...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Commonwealth v. Smith
...competent, and leaves no reasonable doubt as to the character of the place. See Com. v. Clancy, 154 Mass. 128, 27 N.E. 1001;Com. v. Healey, 157 Mass. 455, 32 N.E. 656. The mode in which the ticket was obtained did not make it inadmissible, even if the right of objecting to it had been reser......
-
Commonwealth v. Smith
... ... Holmes v. Hunt, ... 122 Mass. 505, 516, 517; Crandell v. White, 164 ... Mass. 54, 60, 41 N.E. 204. Apart from them, the evidence was ... competent, and leaves no reasonable doubt as to the character ... of the place. See Com. v. Clancy, 154 Mass. 128, 27 ... N.E. 1001; Com. v. Healey, 157 Mass. 455, 32 N.E ... 656. The mode in which the ticket was obtained did not make ... it inadmissible, even if the right of objecting to it had ... been reserved in the agreed facts, which is not the case ... Com. v. Ryan, 157 Mass. 403, 32 N.E. 349; Com ... v. Tibbetts, 157 Mass. 519, ... ...
-
Commonwealth v. Jensky
...telephone, had previously denied that he did; and that the room contained papers relative to horse races and betting thereon. Commonwealth v. Healey, 157 Mass. 455 Commonwealth v. Warren, 161 Mass. 281 . Exceptions overruled. ...
- Soule v. Soule