Lindsey v. Commonwealth

The petitioner sued out his writ of error to reverse two concurrent sentences of seven to nine years in the State prison imposed upon him simultaneously in the Superior Court for the offences respectively of incest and of carnal knowledge of a female child under the age of sixteen. The extreme penalties for these crimes are respectively twenty years and life imprisonment. G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 272, § 17; c. 265, § 23.

One of the petitioner’s contentions is that he was denied due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by reason of the fact that…