Commonwealth v. Bartholomew

This case is before us on a substitute consolidated bill of exceptions of the defendants, who have been found guilty on an indictment which charges that “on the ninth day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-nine, [they] did unlawfully possess a machine gun as defined in § 121 of c. 140 of the Tercentenary Edition of the General Laws of the said Commonwealth, without permission under § 131 of the said c. 140.”

There was evidence that the defendants were in joint possession of a “Thompson sub-machine gun of 45 calibre, which is a small arms calibre, . . .…