The Wrong Army

During the Revolutionary War, a Pennsylvania man was tried for high treason for adhering to the British enemy. The prosecution's first evidence was that he had gone over to a body of troops he apparently believed were British; they were in fact American soldiers. Prosecutors offered his own words to show that he had really meant to join the enemy, and called another witness who said he was later seen parading with the enemy's light horse in Philadelphia, a different county from the one where the charge was laid. The defence argued that joining American troops, even by mistake, could not be treason, that words alone prove nothing, and that evidence from another county was inadmissible until an overt act had been proved in the county of trial.