On 4 August 1735, John Peter Zenger was tried and acquitted of seditious libel; an important event in the developed of freedom of the press.

In 1733, a group who opposed New York governor William Cosby founded the New York Weekly Journal. These men hired Zenger to edit and print their opposition paper. The newspaper’s attacks against Cosby and the Royal Party did not go unnoticed.

On 22 October 1734, Governor Cosby ordered that four issues of the Journal be publicly burned “as containing in them many things tending to sedition and faction, to bring His Majesty’s government into contempt, and to disturb the peace thereof, and containing in them likewise not only reflections upon His Excellency the Governor in particular, and the legislature in general, but also upon the most considerable persons in the most distinguished stations in this Province.” Then, on 2 November 1734, a bench warrant was issued for Zenger’s arrest. From November 1734 until his trail on 4 August 1735, Zenger was held in prison.

At his trial, Zenger was represented by the 80 year old Andrew Hamilton, a distinguished lawyer from Philadelphia. Hamilton admitted that Zenger published the New York Weekly Journal, but argued that he could not be convicted for libel if the charges made in the paper were true. According to English common law, the truthfulness of the statements was not a legitimate defense and the Attorney General ordered the jury to return a verdict of “guilty.”
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The jury ignored their instructions and returned a verdict of “not guilty.” The ramifications of this verdict provided a legal framework to move away from English common law, supported the tensions between England the American colonies, and provided rationale for the first amendment to the United States Constitution.

In 2009, Schoolcraft College student Kyle Standifer cited the Zenger trial in his video “Bill of Rights Discussion Question.” Although the Supreme Court has since ruled on the legality of the final question that Standifer uses at the end of his video, it is still provocative.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD