In May, Lyman Tremaine, from the House Judiciary Committee, reported adversely on the petition in a lengthy document, which incorporated a letter from District-Attorney Crowley, urging the committee “not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal;” and declaring that “Miss Anthony’s trial was fair and constitutional and by an impartial jury.” (!) Mr. Tremaine’s report said:  “Congress can not be converted into a national court of review for any and all criminal convictions where it shall be alleged the judge has committed an error.”  Thus did he deliberately ignore the point at issue, the refusal of a trial by jury.  It concluded by saying:  “Since the discussion of this question has arisen in the committee, the President has pardoned Miss Anthony for the offense of which she was convicted and this seems to furnish a conclusive reason why no further action should be taken by the judiciary committee.” (!) The learned gentleman probably referred to the pardon of the inspectors by the President.  Miss Anthony had not asked executive clemency for herself.

Benjamin F. Butler presented an able and exhaustive minority report which closed with the following declaration:  “Therefore, because the fine has been imposed by a court of the United States for an offense triable by jury, without the same being submitted to the jury, and because the court assumed to itself the right to enter a verdict without submitting the case to the jury, and in order that the judgment of the House of Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the committee, may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its determination to sustain in its integrity the common law right of trial by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioner be granted.”

In June George F. Edmunds made an adverse report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in this remarkable language:  “That they are not satisfied that the ruling of the judge was precisely as represented in the petition, and that if it were so, the Senate could not legally take any action in the premises, and they move that the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the petition, and that the bill be postponed indefinitely.”

Senator Matthew II.  Carpenter presented a long and carefully prepared minority report which concluded: 

Unfortunately the United States has no “well-ordered system of jurisprudence.”  A citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and no court can grant him relief or a new trial.  If a citizen have a cause involving the title to his farm, if it exceed $2,000 in value, he may bring his cause to the Supreme Court; but if it involve his liberty or his life, he can not.  While we permit this blemish to exist on our judicial system, it behooves us to watch carefully the judgments inferior courts may render; and it is doubly important that we should see to it that twelve jurors shall concur with the judge