Pervear v. Massachusetts was a case over the issue of prisoners' rights brought to the United States Supreme Court in 1866. The Court was asked to rule on fines imposed upon a liquor dealer by the state. Pervear was licensed by the United States under the current internal revenue code to keep and sell liquor. He was fined and sentenced to three months of hard labor for failing to have a state license for his liquor store. He pleaded that he had a license from the United States under the internal revenue acts of Congress, he had paid a tax for the keeping and selling of intoxicating liquors, and that the fine and punishment imposed and inflicted by the law of Massachusetts was cruel, excessive, and unusual. Pervear believed the state law was
