Marshall versus Jefferson: el caso United States v. Burr (1807)

Abstract

Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall embodie two opposed personalities of the young Republic. They also symbolize two encountered constitutional convictions at  this time. That conflict was especially showed in the United States v. Burr case (1807) in which Aaron Burr, Vice-president of the United States during the first Jefferson´s presidential period, was charged of treason.
From the point of view constitutional, the Law of treason offered an exceptional interest. The crime was the most serious against the safety of the state; but, by the same token, the stigma it carries, and the vagueness of its reach might to be converted in a notorious instrument of arbitrary power and political faction.
In accordance with the third Section of the Art. III of the Constitution: «Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court».
Marshall presided over the Circuit Court at Richmond which judged Aaron Burr. The Burr case was a political trial of the first magnitude. Previously the trial, President Jefferson, in a message sent to Congress, on weak evidences and mere rumours, openly proclaimed thar Burr was guilty. As some author has told, Jefferson was savagely determined that Burr should hang and threw the whole weight and prestige of the administration behind the prosecution. He was quite prepared to circumvent the Constitution to this end.
Marshall was aware that a permissive definition of treason should allow its utilization as a weapon for the political repression; so that in a previous case, the Ex Parte Bollman case, maintained: «It is, therefore, more safe as well as more consonant to the principles of our constitution, that the crime of treason should not be extended by construction to doubtful cases; and that crimes not clearly within the constitutional definition, should receive such punishment as the legislature in its wisdom may provide».
In his charge to jury in the Burr case, Marshall alleged two crucial considerations: 1st. «That this indictment, having charged the prisoner —Aaron Burr— with levying
war on Blennerhassett´s island, and containing no other overt act, cannot be supported by proof that war was levied at that place by other persons, in the absence of the prisoner,
even admitting those persons to be connected with him in one common treasonable conspiracy». 2nd. «That admitting such an indictment could be supported by such
evidence, the previous conviction of some person who committed the act which is said to amount to levying war, is indispensable to the conviction of a person who advised
or procured that act».
The jury expressed a verdict of no guilty and by it the jurors exculpated Burr of the crime of treason. Immediately, Jefferson criticized bitterly Marshall on considering that the Chief Judge had assumed a factional behaviour in the Burr trial. Jefferson never discussed in legal terms the judgment; neither the interpretation given by Marshall of the treason clause; its criticism always turned around the process had been a political event. The case United States v. Burr was actually the case John Marshall versus Thomas Jefferson.