Board of Commissioners v. Merchant, 103 NY 143 - 1886

—law "which would practically shut out the evidence of a party and thus deny him the opportunity for a trial would substantially deprive him of due process of law*** But so long as the legislature, in prescribing rules of evidence, in either civil or criminal cases, leaves a party a fair opportunity to make his defense and to submit all the facts to the jury to be weighed by them …

The Legislature clearly has the power to prescribe new rules of evidence, as well as the power to alter existing rules of evidence or prescribe methods of proof

—had held constitutional a statute making the drinking of liquor on premises, prima facie evidence of occupant's sale with intent that liquor should be there drunk.

"It cannot be disputed that the courts of this and other states are committed to the general principle that, even in criminal prosecutions, the legislature may, with some limitations, enact that when certain facts have been proved they shall be prima facie evidence of the existence of the main fact in question. See cases cited in

The presumption need not be labeled "conclusive" to run afoul of constitutional principles: " `A law which would practically shut out the evidence of a party and thus deny him the opportunity for a trial would substantially deprive him of due process of law.'"

The law implies a sale from the fact that liquor in a saloon was set before and drunk by one calling for it.

Many such exertions of this power are shown in the legislation of the several states, and their validity, as against the present objection, has been uniformly recognized save where they have been found to be merely arbitrary mandates, or to discriminate invidiously between different persons in substantially the same situation.

[PDF] Artificial Presumptions in the Criminal Law

[PDF] The War on Crime