If the government can dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only shut out any evidence it pleases, tending to vindicate the accused, but it can require that any evidence whatever, that it pleases to offer, be held as conclusive proof of any offence whatever which the government chooses to allege.
He warns that government control over evidence can manipulate the judicial process to the detriment of the accused.
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Any restriction upon the exercise of this right is a restriction upon his rightful power of providing for, and accomplishing, his own well-being.
There is no more absurdity in giving a jury a veto upon the laws, than there is in giving a veto to each of these other tribunals.
And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.
Juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it.