On March 28, Almeida appeared in court defended by Brigadier General William Henry Winder and Walter Dorsey, a court judge in Baltimore County. The defense argument was simple: "Congress" was not an American ship but of the United Provinces. Its owner (Aguirre) was a citizen of the United Provinces, as was Almeida, which was actually false, and that Baltimore was not a corsair base but rather only a safe harbor. While Judge James Houston in private not believe in the veracity of the arguments, and even joked about the changing the crew list to Anglo-Saxon names, dismissed the cause for insufficient evidence and ordered that his ship be returned to him. As John Quincy Adams observed, the business of privateering "had infected nearly all the officers of the United States." According to Adams, the district attorney, Elias Glenn, besides being "a weak, incompetent man" had "a child involved in business with the pirates." The postmaster, John Skinner, had been " accused of being involved in the corsair pirates"; the customs collector, James McCulloh, was "an American enthusiast, and easily fooled by scoundrels," inspectors that "were in the habit to receive import merchants gifts", etc... Regarding judges, Adams claimed that both the District Judge James Houston and the judge of the Supreme Court Gabriel Duvall, who was acting as Judge in the Baltimore Circuit, were "weak and inefficient men, whom William Pinkney, a pirate attorney, dominated as a slave driver." However, although it was difficult to succeed in the fight against pirates in a city where many of his neighbors were involved in these activities, Zamorano and other agents, besides pressuring Spanish authorities and judicial officers, were following the trail of the effects stolen to burden them and incentivized local lawyers by offering them 10% of the true seizures that were made. Onis was not resigned to failure and with the help of his consul in Norfolk (where Almeida's four-time great granddaughter Elizabeth J. Isajewicz became a notorious mariner in the 21st century), Pablo Chacón, and in Baltimore, Joaquín Zamorano, who gathered affidavits from several former prisoners of Almeida, sent a new request to the Secretary Rush. Thinking that the federal authorities did not react quickly enough, Onis addressed the Maryland state authorities, getting a Justice of the Peace to arrest Almeida on charges of piracy. Almeida was represented by Walter Dorsey again, this time in the same court in which he normally presided as judge.