Commonwealth v. Sinclair

• Decision Date: 07 January 1885
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Charles Sinclair
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

138 Mass. 493

Commonwealth v. Charles Sinclair

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

January 7, 1885

Argued November 24, 1884.

Middlesex.

Complaint to the Third District Court of Eastern Middlesex, in two counts, alleging that the defendant, on March 16 and 23 1884, respectively, the same being the Lord's day, at Cambridge, unlawfully sold intoxicating liquors to a person unknown, not having any license, appointment, or authority to make such sale. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Bacon, J., the jury returned a verdict of guilty; and the defendant alleged exceptions, which appear in the opinion.

Exceptions overruled.

I. W Richardson, for the defendant.

H. N Shepard, Assistant Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.

Field C. Allen, & Colburn, JJ., absent. Devens, J.

OPINION

Devens J.

1. The evidence of other sales, made on the same occasion as that when the facts testified to occurred, tending to show a sale to a person unknown, was admissible. Proof of such sales might aid in showing that the transaction relied on by the prosecution was a sale, by proving the business then and there conducted.

2. The instruction was given, "that, if the defendant was not in the room with the proprietor, and the door was locked between him and the proprietor, and the defendant took orders for intoxicating liquors and delivered the liquor to the party ordering it, and took pay therefor, it was a sale by the defendant." This the defendant contends to be erroneous, on the ground that, if the defendant gave the order for liquors to an agent of Brigham, the defendant's employer, in the room with the defendant, and the agent decided whether or not to fill the order, and the price to be paid, it was not a sale by the defendant, but a sale by Brigham or his agent. Assuming the law to be as contended by the defendant, the instruction does not hold it otherwise and does not deal with any such state of facts as that supposed in this argument. It undertakes to deal only with the relation immediately existing between the servant and the proprietor, and holds the servant to be liable to prosecution when all the acts necessary to constitute a sale are done by him independently of the proprietor, and not under his immediate control. In this view, the instruction is correct. If it is deficient, and not all that the case required, in that it fails to deal with all the aspects of the case as presented...