to be governed by the Constitution and laws as they are, and that if the defendant has been guilty of violating the law, she must submit to the penalty, however unjust or absurd the law may be.  But courts are not required to so interpret laws or constitutions as to produce either absurdity or injustice, so long as they are open to a more reasonable interpretation.  This must be my excuse for what I design to say in regard to the propriety of female suffrage, because with that propriety established there is very little difficulty in finding sufficient warrant in the Constitution for its exercise.  This case, in its legal aspects, presents three questions which I propose to discuss.

1.  Was the defendant legally entitled to vote at the election in question?

    2.  If she was not entitled to vote but believed that she was, and
    voted in good faith in that belief, did such voting constitute a
    crime under the statute before referred to?

    3.  Did the defendant vote in good faith in that belief?

He argued the case from a legal, constitutional and moral standpoint and concluded: 

One other matter will close what I have to say.  Miss Anthony believed, and was advised, that she had a right to vote.  She may also have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the question as to her right could not be brought before the courts for trial without her voting or offering to vote, and if either was criminal, the one was as much so as the other.  Therefore she stands now arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only step by which it was possible to bring the great constitutional question as to her right before the tribunals of the country for adjudication.  If for thus acting, in the most perfect good faith, with motives as pure and impulses as noble as any which can find place in your honor’s breast in the administration of justice, she is by the laws of her country to be condemned as a criminal, she must abide the consequences.  Her condemnation, however, under such circumstances, would only add another most weighty reason to those which I have already advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for their protection.

The district-attorney followed with a two hours’ speech.  Then Judge Hunt, without leaving the bench, delivered a written opinion[73] to the effect that the Fourteenth Amendment, under which Miss Anthony claimed the authority to vote, “was a protection, not to all our rights, but to our rights as citizens of the United States only; that is, the rights existing or belonging to that condition or capacity.”  At its conclusion he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.

Miss Anthony’s counsel insisted that the Court had no power to make such a direction in a criminal case and demanded that the jury be permitted to bring in its own verdict.  The judge made no reply except to order the clerk to take the verdict.  Mr. Selden demanded that the jury be polled.  Judge Hunt refused, and at once discharged the jury without allowing them any consultation or asking if they agreed upon a verdict.  Not one of them had spoken a word.  After being discharged, the jurymen talked freely and several declared they should have brought in a verdict of “not guilty.”