Commonwealth v. Mitchell
| Decision Date | 25 March 1875 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Daniel Mitchell |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Norfolk. Indictment for an assault upon Florence Watson, on August 4, 1874, at Hyde Park. Trial in the Superior Court before Pitman, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions in substance as follows:
At the trial, it appeared that the person upon whom the assault was alleged to have been committed was a little girl. On August 5, Charles Jacobs, a constable of Hyde Park, with a warrant duly issued, went to the house of the defendant for the purpose of arresting him for the assault, found the defendant at his house, and told him that he had a warrant for his arrest. The defendant asked the constable what it was for, to which he replied, "Has Florence Watson been here?" The defendant said that she had not. The constable then said to the defendant, "The more lies told in such cases, the deeper one gets in the mud." At this point in the testimony of the constable, the defendant objected to the constable's putting in testimony going to show a confession made by the defendant to him, after he had talked to the defendant, as aforesaid. But the judge ruled that the testimony was admissible; and the constable then testified that the defendant, after the conversation as aforesaid admitted to him that Florence Watson had been there, and that he gave her three cents.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the defendant alleged exceptions.
Exceptions overruled.
J. F Pickering & E. G. Walker, for the defendant.
C. R. Train, Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
Nothing which was said by the officer making the arrest can be construed as a promise of any advantage to the defendant to be gained by confession. If the defendant's reply, therefore, is to be held inadmissible in evidence against him, it can only be upon the ground that it was induced by fear. But the kind of fear which can have that effect must be something more than that which is produced by the mere fact that the defendant was accused of a crime and was arrested for that reason. If that were all, nothing which an arrested party could say, short of a plea of guilty, would be evidence against him. The most that can be said as to the language used by the officer on this occasion is, that it was an expression of his disbelief of the defendant's story, and his conviction that falsehood could only...
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...but it was explained with the aid of apt illustrations. See Commonwealth v. Curtis, 97 Mass. 574, 578, 579;Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 117 Mass. 431;Commonwealth v. Sego, 125 Mass. 210, 213–214;Commonwealth v. Nott, 135 Mass. 269, 272;Commonwealth v. Kennedy, 135 Mass. 543, 544, 545;Commonwea......
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... ... defendant ... The ... grounds of this assignment are as follows: ‘ The ... statement or so-called confession signed by the defendant was ... typewritten. It consisted of an original and three carbon ... copies. The typing was done by one Mitchell a witness for the ... Commonwealth, who described himself as a typist ‘ of a ... sort’ * * * Mitchell testified that the sheets of paper ... on which the statement was type were removed from the ... typewriter two or three times as the typing progressed, and ... put back again. * * * The ... ...
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Commonwealth v. Preece
...the fact that the defendant was accused of a crime, and was arrested or taken into custody. Com. v. Smith, ubi supra; Com. v. Mitchell, 117 Mass. 431. There was no evidence of any threats made by the officers, or of any acts on their part, to induce him to confess that he was guilty when in......
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Commonwealth v. Preece
...fact that the defendant was accused of a crime, and was arrested or taken into custody. Commonwealth v. Smith, ubi supra. Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 117 Mass. 431. There was no evidence of any threats made by the officers, of any acts on their part to induce him to confess that he was guilty......