The People of the State of New York v. Harry Croswell (3 Johns. Cas. 337 N.Y. 1804), commonly known and cited as People v. Croswell, is an important case in the evolution of United States defamation law. It was a criminal libel case brought against a Federalist journalist named Harry Croswell for his statements about a number of public officials, including then-President Thomas Jefferson.
Croswell was initially convicted in Columbia County court, where the jury was instructed to consider only the question of fact before them, as to whether Croswell had been the one to publish the statements at issue under a pseudonym. He appealed to the Supreme Court of New York, then the state's highest court, for a new trial on several issues including those instructions. In a famous and lengthy argument on Croswell's behalf, Alexander Hamilton tried to convince the judges that truthful statements should not be considered defamatory, regardless of what they concerned.
The judges deadlocked and Croswell's conviction stood, although he was never sentenced or retried. The following year the issue became legally moot as the New York State Legislature wrote Hamilton's argument into the state's libel law, breaking with English precedent under which the truthfulness of the statements alone is not a defense. Other states and the federal government followed suit. Since then it has been a cornerstone of American law on the subject that truthful statements are not actionable.
Background
In 1801, the 22-year-old Harry Croswell, originally from West Hartford, Connecticut, moved across the Hudson River from Catskill, New York, where he had been apprenticed as a printer and learned the trade of journalism from his brother Mackay Croswell, moving to the growing port city of Hudson. A strong sympathizer with the Federalist Party of President John Adams, he took a job writing for the Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper with similar political leanings.
Around the same time, another journalist, Charles Holt, had come to Hudson. From Connecticut, he had sympathies that were strongly with the opposing Democratic-Republican Party, usually known as Republicans, of Thomas Jefferson. The two parties were often at odds, attempting to convince the public that their respective visions of the new nation and policies were the best and that those of the other party were flawed and would lead to disaster and tyranny. Holt came to Hudson to start The Bee so that he could counteract the influence of the Balance.
Croswell then convinced his own editor at the Balance to let him start The Wasp, a small sheet, dedicated to attacking and antagonizing Holt and disparaging Republican politicians and Jefferson. Croswell wrote under the pseudonym of "Robert Rusticoat". The two newspapers engaged in vicious and often witty exchanges over several months.
Trial
In the September 9, 1802 issue of The Wasp, Croswell repeated a charge against Jefferson that had first appeared in the Evening Post, a New York City newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton. Holt had mocked the Federalists' claims against Jefferson's character and said the worst they could say about him was that he had paid a fellow Virginian, James Thompson Callender, to attack the Adams administration in print. "This is wholly false," Croswell responded. Federalists had been charging that Jefferson had paid Callender not only to attack Adams but also to call the late George Washington "a traitor, robber and perjurer ... and for most grossly slandering the private characters of men who, he well knew, were virtuous." No supporter of Jefferson, he claimed, had ever responded, or would respond, to that charge "in an open manly discussion."
Ambrose Spencer, New York's Attorney General, took notice. Jefferson, a critic of the Alien and Sedition Acts passed under the previous administration, was encouraging the use of similar state laws against his many critics. Spencer, a former Federalist himself whose party switch had helped get DeWitt Clinton elected governor in 1798, was the target of one of Croswell's attacks in that same issue of The Wasp and so went before the Columbia County grand jury and got an indictment of Croswell on two charges of criminal libel and sedition. The defendant was accused of
On January 11, 1803, Croswell was arrested and brought to the county courthouse in Claverack, at that time the county seat. After the indictment was read, his attorney requested a copy of the allegedly slanderous documents but was denied. He also requested that the court continue the trial until Callender could be brought from Virginia to testify to the truth of the allegations.