Judge Spicer exonerated the lawmen. In his ruling, he noted that Clanton had the night before, while unarmed, publicly declared that the Earp brothers and Holliday had insulted him, and that when he was armed he intended to shoot them or fight them on sight. On the morning of the shooting Virgil Earp had arrested him for carrying a revolver. At the gunfight, he was unarmed. Spicer noted that Clanton had claimed the Earps were out to murder him, yet on both occasions that day the Earps had not killed him, and allowed him to escape unchallenged during the fight. Spicer wrote, "the great fact, most prominent in the matter, to wit, that Isaac Clanton was not injured at all, and could have been killed first and easiest."