what is Jury Nullification?

http://nowscape.com/fija/_600wrd.htm THE INDEPENDENT JURY'S SECRET POWER By Don Doig National Coordinator, Fully Informed Jury Association Are you one of the millions of Americans who feel you have no control over the government, that lately it seems to be acting more like a "master" than a "servant"? Did America's Founders leave us defenseless? No, they did not. We, the people, do have a very powerful personal "handle" on our government. This is the power of the jury to judge the law itself, if justice requires it, and to refuse to convict the defendant if the law is lacking in merit. Jurors may believe a law to be unconstitutional, or fundamentally unfair, or misapplied in the case at hand. In order to fulfil their responsibility to the defendant, the community, and their own consciences, they must not set aside their own judgment of right and wrong. Jurors can never be punished for a verdict which displeases the judge. In a word, the jury was traditionally viewed as a political institution, charged with the responsibility not only to deliver justice in a particular case, but to enforce the Bill of Rights! Just like the three sitting branches of government, it has a veto on proposed laws. These principles date back hundreds of years. In 1670, William Penn was arrested for preaching a Quaker sermon, by so doing breaking the law of England, which made the Church of England the only legal church. The jurors in his trial, led by Edward Bushell, refused to convict him, despite being detained for days and held without food, water, tobacco or toilet facilities. The most adamant four of them were then put in prison for nine weeks. When it eventually released the four by court order, the highest court of England both acknowledged and established that trial jurors could not be punished for their verdicts. Our freedoms of religion, peaceable assembly and speech thus all trace to our right to a trial by a jury of peers, a jury unintimidated by the government. The sedition trial of John Peter Zenger, in the American colonies, was another landmark case. Zenger was arrested for publishing materials critical of the Royal Governor of New York colony and his cronies, accusing them of corruption. While the charges were true, the jury was told that under the law, truth was no defense. Zenger's attorney, Andrew Hamilton, argued to the jury that they were judges of the merits of the law, and should not go against good conscience to convict Zenger of violating such a bad law. The jurors agreed. Zenger was acquitted in about fifteen minutes, and his case helped establish the right to freedom of the press. As Thomas Jefferson said, in a letter to Thomas Paine in 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." America's second President, John Adams, said in 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." And John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said: "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy." Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794. In American legal tradition, an unconstitutional law is viewed as invalid, and is no law at all. And until a law passes the test of community acceptance, and is enforced by juries, it cannot be viewed as a done deal. Meanwhile, legislators continue to receive community feedback on how their work is being received. Judges have, for the last hundred years, tried to hide this power from the American people, and now actively attempt to suppress it. The Fully Informed Jury Association is working to inform all Americans about their right as citizen jurors to vote their consciences, and would like to see citizens chosen to serve as jurors told the truth about their actual rights and responsibilities, as a matter of law. Contact: FIJA, P.O. Box 59, Helmville, MT 59843; 1-800-TEL-JURY. __________________ I've heard about this before. Too often judges and lawyers have forgotten what the legal system is there for and who it is there for. Citzens are uninformed ignoramus's just there to be hurried along like kids to far too many of them. __________________ ***evilcyclops steps onto soapbox*** Well, if you know this you are most likely an informed and intelegent person. The two qualities that will get you kicked of a jury durring selection in a heartbeat. The people with innitiative and common sense usualy use it to AVOID jury duty and therefore cause the system which protects us most, to be broken. So if selected for jury duty pretend to be stupid. Then you will have a chance to have a real effect on our community and may be even our country. ***evilcyclops steps off soapbox*** __________________ If Only People wouldn't watch So Much TV __________________ Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law. Calvin Coolidge, to the Massachusetts State Senate, January 7, 1914 __________________ http://www.friesian.com/nullif.htm [The jury has an] unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law. ~ District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, in United States v. Dougherty, 1972 Indeed, if juries do not have the right and power to nullify the law, we must face the fact that Harriet Tubman, one of the great heroines of American history, would and should have been guilty of multiple federal crimes by violating the fugitive slave laws. That is a morally revolting prospect, but judges today who reject nullification must confess that they would enforce the fugitive slave laws and convict Harriet Tubman. If they were to honestly admit as much, and hold themselves powerless to disobey unjust and morally despicable laws, they should be told that "obeying orders" was not accepted as a defense in the Nazi war crime trials at Nuremberg. It is tempting to say that today we don't have laws like the "fugitive slave laws." That would be a serious self-deception. The prisons are full of people who have done nothing wrong, except be in possession of a "controlled substance" that the federal government, at least, has no authority under the Constitution to "control." People dying of cancer or AIDS have been arrested and jailed just for growing and smoking marijuana, the only thing that enables them to eat, take their medication, and stay alive. Despite the passage of medical marijuana laws in many states, as far apart as California and Maine, federal prosecutors have viciously targeted medical mairjuana activists, who are often very ill themselves, and have found pliant judges who prohibit medical necessity defenses. But must we simply accept such possible injustices in order to uphold the rule of law? By allowing jury nullification, do we not license the misuse of the principle, as when Southern white juries would acquit KKK'ers for murdering or terrorizing blacks or Jews? Unfortunately, as long as we have trials, by jury or otherwise, it will be possible for bias to misuse the law and perpetrate injustices. KKK'ers would have gotten acquitted because a large part of (white) public opinion, and the staff of the courts themselves, was biased in their favor. Regardless of the duties of judges or juries, a means was going to be found in such circumstances to prevent their conviction. The remedy for that is a system of checks and balances. A local jurisdiction, whether in police or courts, that allows KKK'ers to murder people and get away with it is violating the 14th Amendment by denying the "equal protection of the law," making itself liable to federal civil rights intervention, as was vigorously pursued by Ulysses S. Grant, before the shameful capitulation of the Republicans, after Grant was gone, in 1876. Does jury nullification contribute to, rather than mitigate, such judicial misbehavior? No, because it is part of the system of checks and balances itself -- a check against the bias of judges and the irrationality and corruption that creeps steadily into the law, as irresponsible legislators and judges think about things other than justice. Jury nullification is not a violation of the rule of law because it is part of the rule of law. It represents a basic misconception of the principle of the "rule of law" itself to say that it means that everyone absolutely must obey the law until the law can be changed by the appropriate processes. Indeed, that conception of the rule of law would forbid civil disobedience, which was justified by Martin Luther King, quoting St. Augustine, that, "An unjust law is no law at all." But how can we have the rule of law if we accept something like that? How can people just go around judging for themselves whether a law is just or not? The answer is, that they have to, and that is simply the principle of moral conscience. The rule of law is not contrary to that; for the rule of law is not an injunction to blind obedience. Instead, the rule of law is a principle of the limitation of the authority of government. To be "ruled by laws, not by men," is the old expression. Now, a jury nullifying a law or a protester practicing civil disobedience is not engaged in ruling. Instead, they are doing the precise opposite: negating the instructions and actions of government. The principle of the rule of law does the same kind of thing, for it means that the authority and power of government and of individuals in office is limited to those spheres, those issues, and those actions that are specified by the law. The rule of law denies to government unlimited or discretionary power and authority. The rule of law is thus part of a system of checks and balances to prevent dictatorship and despotism. Because of that, it is curiously the case that you do not need to have laws to have the rule of law: for the whole system of Common Law developed through the practice of the courts in considering claims that someone had committed a wrong. The original purpose of trial by jury in the Magna Carta was similar. The threat, indeed, addressed by the Magna Carta was of the laws and judges of King John. If Magna Carta juries could not nullify the laws of King John, or ignore the instructions and rulings of his judges, trial by jury would have been a useless protection. But the Barons, in obtaining King John's pledge, as Lysander Spooner wrote in 1852, "were engaged in no such senseless work as that." The jury is the last line of defense, the last check and balance, against tyrannical government, if, that is, it is charged with determining the justice of a case and not just with blindly applying the law as given by a judge. It was become a very interesting perversion of the sytem of checks and balances when, as we are told, the Constitution means whatever the Supreme Court says it means but that we are then expected to obey without resistance. Since the Supreme Court has in general, since the New Deal, interpreted the Constitution to mean exactly the opposite of its original purpose, which had been to establish a federal government of limited and enumerated powers, but which now seems to have gotten us a national government of unlimited and plenary powers, which can legislate or regulate in any matter whatsoever, what we have seen is the destruction of the rule of law, through the arbitrary authority of an irresponsible court, rather than its preservation. When the citizen demands that the government obey the Constitution, and the government replies that it is obeying its interpretation of the Constitution, which gives it authority and discretion far beyond that overthrown in the American Revolution, then the whole idea of the "rule of law" has been turned around to justify the very kind of arbitrary, discretionary, and unaccountable authority that it was supposed to prevent. __________________ "Since the Supreme Court has in general, since the New Deal, interpreted the Constitution to mean exactly the opposite of its original purpose, which had been to establish a federal government of limited and enumerated powers, but which now seems to have gotten us a national government of unlimited and plenary powers, which can legislate or regulate in any matter whatsoever, what we have seen is the destruction of the rule of law, through the arbitrary authority of an irresponsible court, rather than its preservation." This is unfortunately absolutely true. No doubt about it the Supreme Court over the decades have engaged in judical fiat. They totally disregard{ed} the Constitution and make up laws for their agenda [example: see Roe vs. Wade} instead of the legislative branch properly carrying out its defined role of passing laws the people want. This shameless behavior of judicial activism has gotten slightly better over the past decade with the appointment of those who who know what the proper role of the Supreme Court is. But alas there still remains a lot of work to be done and not only with the Supreme Court. The legislative and executive branches of government, especially of the federal government, have also engage in such power grabbing of matters which are none of its concern. Can people not see the ultimate power the judicial branch of government has grabbed for itself? No of course not as long as government takes care of them they don't worry about it. Ultimately this lemming-like behavior will lead to tyranny. Each branch of government under the Constitution has its own resposibilities and is supposed to be equal to the other 2 branches of government. So one branch of government is not supposed to rule over the other 2 branches of government as has the Judicial branch done for many years over the legislative and executive branches of government. Just as in the jury system we the people are the supposed to be ultimate arbiter of whats okay. We, the people are the final check and balance in this intricate system of check and balances set up by the great founders of this wonderful country. Basically this **** needs to stop. As evidence by the recent misconduct of the Florida Supreme Court throwing out rules this crap happens at the state level. Freedom or Tyranny folks. Its your choice. So take back the power you have. :0) [Edited by sbp on 11-30-2000 at 04:58 AM] __________________ __________________ __________________ http://www.jpfo.org Mavi forum