of the Constitution of the United States.  It is hardly worth while to argue that the right of trial by jury includes the right to a verdict by the jury, and to a free and impartial verdict, not one ordered, compelled and forced from them by an adverse and predetermined court.  The language of the Constitution of the United States is that “in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.”  Do the words an “impartial jury” mean a jury directed and controlled by the court, and who might just as well, for all practical purposes, be twelve wooden automatons, moved by a string pulled by the hand of the judge?

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle commented: 

In the action of Judge Hunt there was a grand, over-reaching assumption of authority, unsupported by any point in the case itself, but adopted as an established legal principle.  If there is such a principle, Judge Hunt did his duty beyond question, and he is scarcely lower than the angels so far as personal power goes.  The New York Sun assumes that there is no such principle; that if there were, “Judge Hunt might on his own ipsedixit, and without the intervention of a jury, fine, imprison or hang any man, woman or child in the United States.”  And the Sun proceeds to say that Judge Hunt “must be impeached and removed.  Such punishment for the commission of a crime like his against civil liberty is a necessity.  The American people will not tolerate a judge like this on the bench of their highest court.  To do it would be to submit their necks to as detestable a tyranny as ever existed on the face. of the earth.  They will not sit quietly by to see their liberties, red and radiant with the blood of a million of their sons, silently melted away in the judicial crucible of a stolid and tyrannical judge of their Federal Court.”  This is forcible, certainly; but it ought to be speedily decided, at least, whether there is such a legal principle as we have mentioned.

The Utica Observer gave this opinion: 

We have sought the advice of the best legal and judicial minds in our State in regard to the ruling of Justice Ward Hunt in the case of Susan B. Anthony.  While the written opinion of the judge is very generally commended, his action in ordering a verdict of guilty to be entered, without giving the jury an opportunity of saying whether it was their verdict or not, is almost universally condemned.  Such a case never before occurred in the history of our courts, and the hope is very general that it never will again.  Between the indictment and the judgment stands the jury, and there is no way known to the law by which the jury’s power in criminal cases can be abrogated.  The judge may charge the jury that the defense is invalid; that it is their clear duty to find the prisoner guilty.  But beyond this he can not properly go.  He has no right to order the clerk to enter a verdict which is not the verdict