State v. Morrissey
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
On exceptions, from superior court for Cumberland county. Indictment alleging “that Sally Morrissey of Portland, single woman, on at Portland . . . being pregnant with a male child, did then and there bring forth the said male child alive of the body of her the said Sally Morrissey, alone and in secret, which said male child so being born alive, was by the laws of said state a bastard.
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On exceptions, from superior court for Cumberland county. Indictment alleging “that Sally Morrissey of Portland, single woman, on at Portland . . . being pregnant with a male child, did then and there bring forth the said male child alive of the body of her the said Sally Morrissey, alone and in secret, which said male child so being born alive, was by the laws of said state a bastard. And that afterwards, to wit, on the same seventeenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, she the said Sally Morrissey with force and arms, at Portland, in said…
1Opinion of the CourtPeters, J.
The first count is the copy of a form provided by an English statute (St. 14 and 15, Yict. c. 100, § 4 ); adopted by our legislature (Laws 1865, c. 329) ; approved and sustained by this court (State v. Verrill, 54 Maine, 408) ; with this difference, that in the statutory form the allegation does not appear, as it does in this indictment, that.the prisoner “made an assault upon *404the deceased.” The wisdom of the statute we have no doubt of.- There was.no part of criminal pleading so difficult, as to safely and correctly describe in an indictment the means and manner by which a murder was…
2Cases cited2 opinions
- Commonwealth v. BrettunMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1868
- Commonwealth v. StrangfordMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1873
3Cited by5 opinions
- State v. NoakesSupreme Court of Vermont · 1897
- People v. BemisMichigan Supreme Court · 1883
- State v. ChaseSupreme Judicial Court of Maine · 1953
- State v. McMahanIdaho Supreme Court · 1937
- State v. McMahanIdaho Supreme Court · 1937