this ancestor had been from new spain, ecuador, present-day ecuador. she was perhaps african, perhaps indigenous native american from that area of south america, and had been taken to london, and resided there. despite that, chief justice john marshall in the 1813 decision, affirms the hearsay rule. it is designed to keep out oral testimony about the ancestors of enslaved people. her free status, all of the evidence for her free status, her ancestor's free status came from depositions in which people said my mother said, or i heard about this, it was secondhand testimony. marshall's decision had rendered that testimony inadmissible. in all future cases as well. and marshall's decision was designed to protect property rights. in fact, marshall invokes the idea of property and defending property rights in that 1813 decision. in queen v hepburn, there is something we need to hold in our mind. an assent was written in which it was strongly implied that slave people are not property under the law. and in particular, and cases where a person's freedom was on