Read’s Notebook, 12.[†]
Court of Quarter Sessions of Delaware, Kent County.
December, 1794.
At the trial the Negro (who it was agreed had been freed in Maryland eight years ago) was offered as a witness to prove the
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assault, there being nobody else to prove the facts for the State. Objected to her admission that she was within the Act of Assembly, February 1787, 2 Del. Cas. Laws [887]. And in support of the objection, the counsel said it was the policy of the state to exclude a people at enmity with the “whites,” without education and void of principle, from swearing against white people, and relied on the case o Collins v. Hall, Sussex County.
The Attorney General urged that ex necessitate rei she ought to be admitted and mentioned the case of an owner of a note being a witness for the State to prove the tearing of it, that by the Act of Assembly (1787) Negroes must have liberty to obtain redress, which could not be unless they were allowed as witnesses for the State, and that by common law no color or profession excluded a person from giving testimony.
BASSETT, C. J.,
said a majority of the Court were for admitting ex necessitate rei that she was a good witness by the common law and not excluded by the Act of Assembly from obtaining redress in that way; but if the assault had been on a white woman or man, he would not have admitted her.
Another witness proved that it was the Negro’s own assault.
Verdict of not guilty, and the Court refused to certify.