While presiding over the 1800 sedition trial of Thomas Cooper, Chase railed against Cooper during his instructions to the jury, seeming to act more as a prosecutor than a judge.
Before a treason trial in Philadelphia, he showed defense attorneys his opinion before the trial had even taken place. He later sentenced the man to death. (President John Adams pardoned the man before he could be executed.)
At a sedition trial in Richmond, he allowed a juror to be seated even though the juror said he had already made up his mind that the defendant was guilty.
And while presiding over a grand jury in Delaware, Chase angrily refused to dismiss a grand jury after it declined to charge a man with sedition.
Later that same year, he campaigned for Adams’s reelection — an overtly partisan move that raised the ire of Democratic Republicans and their victorious candidate, Thomas Jefferson.
In a 2003 speech, former chief justice William H. Rehnquist put it like this: “Chase was one of those people who are intelligent and learned, but seriously lacking in judicial temperament.”
Once they had the reins of power, the Democratic Republicans overturned a law that had created lower courts in a bid to limit the power of judges installed by Adams.
But that didn’t stop Chase. In 1803, before a Baltimore jury, Chase denounced the Democratic Republicans for overturning the law.
When Jefferson found out about it, he sent a letter to a congressman friend strongly suggesting that — cough cough, hint hint — only Congress could do something about Chase.
The next year, the House voted 73-32 to impeach him, charging that he “tend[ed] to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested.”
The Senate trial took place in February 1805. Over 10 days, senators heard from more than 50 witnesses, according to Rehnquist. Chase maintained that he could not be impeached for poor judgment, but only indictable offenses.