Help Wanted

[Pamela]

I just want to comment from what I've noticed in court proceedings, and I have no legal training whatsoever. Many times a witness is asked if they took any action based on a conversation they had with a defendant, and the are told not to say what the defendant said. The witness, in this case, Lloyd, would testify that he went to where the guns were hidden in the tavern and removed them and put them in his room, and later that night two men arrived on horseback and he gave one of the guns to Herold and both men were given whiskey to drink. Those were the actions he took as a result of the conversation he had with Mary a few hours prior. The jury can deduce what was said by the defendant based on the resulting actions taken by the witness.

If heresay was a problem in this instance in a Mary's trial, I suppose Lloyd's evidence could have been presented in that way. As far as I know, defendants couldn't testify in either civil of military trial in those days, with the exception of one state which I think was Maine.