What undermined Smith’s position was the structure of his argument. Judge Hayes found that Smith intended to remove Mason and the others “without the free will and consent” of those persons. He found that their liberty would be seriously endangered by the removal. He also made a finding about the nature of the relationship itself: that Mason and her family, who could not read or write and who had no independent knowledge of California or Texas law, could not be said to have entered into any voluntary agreement with Smith that would authorize the removal. This reasoning addressed the gap left by the testimony rules: Hayes did not simply take Mason’s word over Smith’s. He examined the structure of the situation and found that Smith’s claimed voluntary arrangements were structurally impossible to establish.
His deliberation took three days. On January 22, 1856, he issued his ruling. The specific language that has been quoted in various secondary sources includes his finding that the persons in question were “entitled to their freedom.” He grounded this in California’s first constitution and its prohibition on slavery.
The ruling freed Biddy Mason, her three daughters, her sister Hannah (possibly not a blood relation), Hannah’s children, and others in the extended group: thirteen people in total, all women and children. All of them walked out of the proceedings as free people. The case came slightly more than a year before the Supreme Court’s *Dred Scott* decision, which would attempt to close off the legal avenue Hayes had used. At the time of Hayes’s ruling, freedom suits in free states were still a viable path, and he had used one.