acquittal of the massacre redcoats

• Father of the American Revolution: pious, principled, and passionate for liberty, Samuel Adams championed the cause of independence with his unique ability to communicate, motivate, and organize.

... mark the anniversary of the 1770 "Bloody Massacre" of Boston. "Otis and Adams are politic in promoti... a strategy to passively resist the redcoats. When Governor Bernard demanded that the Massachus... the ensuing furor ended in a trial and acquittal of the British captain who allegedly gave the orde...

• The New American
• July 29, 2002

• An inquiry into the right of criminal juries to determine the law in colonial America.

A review of the historical record belies the view that American criminal juries from Colonial times through 1830 had a generally-accepted "right" to judge the law in criminal trials. It appears criminal juries did not have such a right in mid-18th Century Georgia, 17th and early 18th-Century Maryland, or 18th Century Massachusetts. It does appear that criminal juries had some form of lawfinding right in Rhode Island throughout the colonial period. The lack of evidence as to the other states may indicate an absence of any sense that a right to judge the law existed.

.... During the redcoats' advance, four stragglers and a deserter were take...A perverse or puckish acquittal of a defendant whom the jury believes to have been... of the soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre,(77) defense lawyer Josiah Quincy told the jury wh...

• Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
• Vol. 89 Nbr. 1, September 1998