While three men (George S. Key, Henry Jones, and Edward Smith) were initially sentenced to death for murder, their supporters launched a legal challenge to the Guano Act and the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, argued as Jones vs. U.S. before the U.S. Supreme Court and, when that failed, successfully lobbied President Benjamin Harrison to commute the sentences. By that point, the case had achieved such notoriety that he devoted part of his 1891 State of the Union address to defending his decision.