Note: Supporting material for the facts
cited below are given
at the following Internet websites: www.fija.org,
www.csdp.org.
Fact: Jurors have a right to judge the law
itself, and to refuse to convict
if they believe the law is wrong (ie, unjust, unworkable,
invalid,
irrational, misapplied, etc). This principle, called
jury nullification or
jury veto power, has been established in English and
American legal
tradition since the 17th century, and until about 1895 juries
were
routinely reminded of this fact by judges. In the present
day, however,
trial judges often falsely tell jurors that their only job is to
decide if
the 'facts' are sufficient to convict, and that if so, they
'should' or
'must' convict.
Note: Because of a recent California Supreme
Court decision (People vs
Williams), jury nullification has now been somewhat nullified, at
least in
California. A juror from this state can still vote for acquittal
on the
basis of his belief that the law is wrong; it's just that he
can't tell
anyone why. This means that he must either remain silent, or he
must
revert to such fibs as 'I don't find the evidence convincing.' A
juror is
of course not required to deliberate or to state the reasons for
his vote,
but this will be difficult for a lot of people. Perhaps the best
solution
is for the juror to say something on the order of 'My intuition
tells me
this man didn't do it', 'I believe in his innocence because of a
dream', or
or 'Psychic messages have convinced me that I cannot vote to
convict.'
This kind of reasoning should be readily acceptable to most
Californians.
Fact: In writing our nation's Constitution,
perhaps the greatest concern of
America's founders was to restrict the power of the government in
such a
way that it could not become tyrannical. One of the ways
they chose to do
this was to mandate that all persons accused of nontrivial crimes
would be
guaranteed a jury trial. They did this because jurors, by
the well-
established legal tradition mentioned earlier, have the power to
refuse to
convict a defendant under laws they consider wrong. In the
words of
President Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of
Independence and
the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution),
"I
consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man, by
which a
government can be held to the principles of its
constitution."
Fact: A number of important laws have been
effectively overturned and
prosecutions brought to an end because of jury
nullification. These
include the infamous Alien and Sedition Act, the Salem witch
trials, the
Fugitive Slave Laws, and Alcohol Prohibition.
Fact: While it is commonly said that
'ignorance of the law is no excuse',
the reality is that there are so many laws -- plus rules and
regulations
and 'case law' (judges' decisions) which have the force or effect
of law --
that it would take far more than a lifetime to read them all, to
say
nothing of understanding them. Indeed, there are so many
laws which cover
so many subjects, that it is probably impossible to keep from
violating
several of them every day.
Fact: Laws are sometimes (and perhaps often)
used to persecute political
dissidents and others whom the Establishment does not like.
This is easy
to do because of the just-noted large number of laws.
Accordingly, jurors
need to be sensitive to the real motives of government
prosecutors.
Fact: America has 5% of the world's
population, but 25% of the world's
prisoners. It incarcerates more people per capita than
almost any country
in the world, including totalitarian regimes. This, then,
is a good
measure of how far down the road to totalitarianism America has
already
gone, and a cry for jurors to do something about it by means of
jury
nullification.
Fact: Approximately half of all prison
inmates have been incarcerated for
the sale or use of recreational drugs. Such laws are an
excellent example
of totalitarianism, because there is nothing more private or
personal than
the decision of what to put into one's own body. (This of
course is not to
say that a person should not be held responsible for what he does
under the
influence of drugs: If he murders, rapes or robs someone, he
should be
prosecuted for murder, rape or robbery, as appropriate, but never
for drug
use.) Furthermore, drug laws have many bad effects,
including the
encouragement of pushers (legalizing drugs would eliminate the
incentive to
acquire new 'customers'), the criminalization of what should be
considered
at worst a medical problem, the destruction of the lives of those
who are
imprisoned, the denial of the undeniable medicinal benefits of
marijuana
and other forbidden drugs, and the elimination of the
'competition' for a
government which for years has itself been neck-deep in the drug
trade
(Iran-Contra and Mena are only two tips of this incredibly huge
iceberg;
for more details, see Alfred W McCoy's definitive 1972 book
The Politics of
Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade).
Because of all this, as
well as the fact that the government can't even keep drugs out of
prisons,
jurors have some very good reasons for using their veto power
against the
drug laws.
Fact: While drug laws represent the laws
most ripe for jury nullification,
there are several others of great importance. These include
property
forfeiture laws, which often result in the confiscation of
property without
the owner ever being convicted of a crime; hate-crime laws, which
are
actually thought-crime laws because they penalize people for
having
politically-incorrect opinions; anti-discrimination laws, which
usurp the
Constitutionally-guaranteed right of free association; licensure
laws,
which keep people from making a living in a profession where they
don't
have the 'right credentials' -- credentials which are often
professionally
irrelevant, costly, and serve only to maintain a monopoly by a
politically-
powerful professional elite; gun-control laws, which are an
attempt to
interfere with (and ultimately do away with) our
Constitutionally-
guaranteed right to keep and bear arms; double-jeopardy
prosecutions, in
which individuals who have been tried and found innocent in state
court are
-- contrary to the Constitution -- subjected to federal
prosecution for the
same acts (or vice-versa); and tax laws, the federal version of
which is
both unconstitutional and never even properly enacted. (For
details on
this latter point, see Red Beckman's book The Law that Never
Was).
Fact: Jurors are often excluded from jury
duty because of their political
opinions, particularly if these opinions are regarded as
unconventional and
'anti-government' (ie, favoring individual freedom and adherence
to the
Constitution). One common procedure by which this is
accomplished is
called voire dire, a process which often involves an
intrusive
questionnaire and/or intensive personal interrogation by the
judge which is
designed to reveal political and other personal beliefs.
Besides being an
outrageous violation of privacy, it is designed to stack juries
with meek
people who hold conventional opinions and who kowtow to
'authority figures'
and thus can be manipulated by the judge and prosecutor.
Fact: A defense attorney is likely to be
(unjustly) slapped with contempt-
of-court charges if he tells jurors that they have the right to
judge the
law as well as the guilt of the defendant. Likewise,
someone who
represents himself in court is likely to be similarly threatened
if he
attempts to describe his motives for breaking a law, or why he
disagrees
with it. And this in spite of the earlier-mentioned fact
that, until about
1895, jurors were regularly instructed by judges that they had
the right to
judge the law as well as the guilt of the defendant.
Fact: The attempt to keep people ignorant of
their right as jurors to
employ jury nullification is part of a much larger effort by
those who rule
us to concentrate power in their own hands and undermine two of
the
fundamental principles of American democracy, namely, that (1)
the acts of
government should represent 'the consent of the governed'; and
(2) that
governmental power should be strictly limited to powers expressly
granted
to it by the Constitution. Some describe this attempt at
concentration of
power as 'conspiracy' or 'the New World Order', but whatever it
is called,
it deserves the most vigorous resistance, including jury
nullification.
Fact: Jury duty, like military service under
the old Selective Service
laws, is considered compulsory by the courts in spite of the fact
that the
US Constitution explicitly forbids involuntary servitude.
Furthermore, the
'pay' offered jurors for this service ($15 per day in Pinellas
county FL
where the author lives) is often not even up to the level of
slave wages,
since not even a slave could live for a day on a juror's
pay. All this is
yet another example of the contempt which the courts and our
'leaders'
exhibit for the Constitution, and for the people who must live
under their
direction.
Some Quotes on Jury Nullification
* President John Adams (1771): It is not
only ... [the juror's] right, but
his duty ... to find the verdict according to his own best
understanding,
judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the
direction of
the court.
* First US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay
(Georgia vs Brailsford,
1794): The jury has the right to judge both the law as
well as the fact in
controversy.
* President Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thomas
Paine, 1789): I consider
trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man, by which a
government
can be held to the principles of its constitution.
* * * Back to the Home Page of John "Birdman" Bryant, the World's Most Controversial Author * * *