a woman from China who arrived at San Francisco in 1848, started a brothel in 1850, becoming the first Chinese madam operating in the United States. She attempted to use California's court system to seek justice twice: She unsuccessfully sued a group of miners for paying her in brass filings instead of gold dust. In August 1852, she threatened to sue Yee Ah Tye, a notorious Chinese leader, for extortion, claiming that he had demanded that her prostitutes pay him a tax. Yee Ah Tye backed down, although he would later be imprisoned for other charges. Case decision In 1853, a California court convicted George Hall, a white man, of the murder of Ling Sing, a Chinese miner, based on the testimony of Chinese witnesses. George Hall appealed the verdict, arguing that the testimony of the Chinese witnesses should not be accepted and that Section 394 of the Act Concerning Civil Cases, which barred the use of testimony by blacks, mulattoes, and Indians against whites, should also be extended to banning the testimony of Chinese. The California Supreme Court, in an opinion delivered by Chief Justice Hugh Murray with the concurrence of Justice Solomon Heydenfeldt, sided with Hall. The case has been described as "containing some of the most offensive racial rhetoric to be found in the annals of California appellate jurisprudence" and "the worst statutory interpretation case in history." In support of its decision to include Chinese people within the class prohibited from giving evidence in favor of or against a white man, the California Supreme Court in the majority opinion stated the following about Chinese people: "The same rule which would admit them to testify, would admit them to all the equal rights of citizenship, and we might soon see them at the polls, in the jury box, upon the bench, and in our legislative halls." "This is not a speculation which exists in the excited and over-heated imagination of the patriot and statesman, but it is an actual and present danger." "The anomalous spectacle of a distinct people, living in our community, recognizing no laws of this State, except through necessity, bringing with them their prejudices and national feuds, in which they indulge in open violation of law; whose mendacity is proverbial; a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point, as their