The Zenger case necessarily reflected on American politics. The acquittal of the Defendant involved the condemnation of the Plaintiff, which meant that Governor Cosby’s administration was found guilty of the things with which the _Journal_ charged it. One more stumbling block was thrown in the path of tyranny, one more support removed from dishonesty in high places. Cosby had hand-picked his judge to insure control of the court, but never would this kind of illegality be repeated with the same lighthearted contempt for criticism. Never again would any Colonial governor try quite so recklessly and arrogantly to rig elections or to seize land or to play the politician with his Council in order to create within it a faction that would rubber-stamp his whims. These misdemeanors had been condemned (by implication) in a cold legal decision—and the Colonies would not forget. The behavior of courts handling libel cases changed. When the New York jury came in with a verdict of “Not guilty,” it did something that was rather startling for the 1730’s. According to the traditional theory of law, the business of jurors was to determine the fact of publication, and to leave the verdict to the court. In this case, the jury should have confined itself to deciding by whom the _Journal_ had been printed and at whom the contents were aimed, after which its function would have been fulfilled. The setup was ideal for Governor Cosby since he had his henchman on the bench, Chief Justice James Delancey, all prepared to render a verdict of “Guilty” as soon as the jury had agreed on the undeniable (and undenied) fact that Peter Zenger was actually printer of the newspaper. Andrew Hamilton scrambled the neat pattern that Cosby had laid out. He made his appeal directly to the jury, ostentatiously bypassing the judges on the bench, presenting past instances in which jurors had taken upon themselves the responsibility of deciding the law—that is, of giving the verdict, instead of merely identifying the printer of the supposedly libelous material. He argued that juries are of little use if they do not perform this function, since there is no reason for jurors to participate in any trial except that as local citizens they are supposed to be familiar with the facts pertinent to the case. He asked the Zenger jurors simply to declare what they knew to be the truth, that “Zenger’s paper” had correctly described the New York administration under which they all lived and suffered. In other words, he appealed to the twelve men in the jury box to take the decision away from a governor-controlled court.