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Senate to Take Up Jury Nullification Legislation

The Senate will consider a bill today that would let defense attorneys tell jurors they can acquit a defendant even if there is sufficient evidence proving his guilt.

Yesterday, a day before the Senate would take up the bill, Rep. Susan DeLemus, a Rochester Republican, introduced a similar bill to the House Judiciary Committee… She introduced her bill, she said, because she wasn’t “super clear” if the previous version had actually found support in the Senate. A subcommittee of the Senate has recommended the full Senate pass the proposal.

Click through for the full article.

On January 18th, 2012, two billboards with ads promoting police accountability and Jury Nullification will be displayed in the Richmond area. The initiative is being headed by Nathan Cox, an Army Veteran and activist for the cause of Liberty, during the week of MLK’s birthday.

It was King who stated: “One may well ask How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

Dr. King understood well that just because one be in a position of power, doesn’t mean that person will act in a moral way. Two organizations that advocate justice and liberty are being promoted by Nathan Cox, who believes that people have the right to be treated fairly and equally by all, whether you wear a badge or a robe.

The second organization Mr. Cox would like to promote is FIJA (fija.org), or the Fully Informed Jury Association. FIJA is a non profit organization whose goal it is to inform citizens of their rights as a juror and that the juror’s mission should be to “protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power of government.” It has become the belief that the juror’s sole duty is to help decide the innocence or guilt of a fellow citizen as well as pass down punishment upon them. Jury nullification is one right of a juror that FIJA teaches about. The founders thought it was important for the people to have a counter to bad laws and practices, so made it possible for a jury to acquit defendants who are technically guilty. An example of how jury nullification works is during the time of slavery. Some jurors would refuse to convict people who were supposedly guilty of helping to free a slave. Slavery is immoral and therefore the people felt they needed to use jury nullification to work toward justice for slaves and those who helped them.

Click through for the entire press release.

This is great to put on the backs of brochures or on other Jury Nullification handouts!

Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

How one feels about jury nullification ultimately depends on how much confidence one has in the jury system. Based on my experience, I trust jurors a lot. I first became interested in nullification when I prosecuted low-level drug crimes in Washington in 1990. Jurors here, who were predominantly African-American, nullified regularly because they were concerned about racially selective enforcement of the law.

Across the country, crime has fallen, but incarceration rates remain at near record levels. Last year, the New York City police made 50,000 arrests just for marijuana possession. Because prosecutors have discretion over whether to charge a suspect, and for what offense, they have more power than judges over the outcome of a case. They tend to throw the book at defendants, to compel them to plead guilty in return for less harsh sentences. In some jurisdictions, like Washington, prosecutors have responded to jurors who are fed up with their draconian tactics by lobbying lawmakers to take away the right to a jury trial in drug cases. That is precisely the kind of power grab that the Constitution’s framers were so concerned about.

Click through for the entire editorial.

Prosecution Explains Jury Tampering Charge

“His speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” prosecutors wrote.

“No legal system could long survive,” they added, “if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable.”

Perhaps the prosecution is unaware that legal systems have survived just fine for centuries. Jury nullification was, after all, formally recognized in the Magna Carta in 1215.

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, also corrects the prosecutor’s ignorance:

“The government is dangerously wrong in claiming it can criminalize sidewalk advocacy supporting jury nullification. Other than the extremely limited situations in which someone seeks to influence a known juror in a case, jury nullification advocacy is squarely protected by the First Amendment.”

The prosecutor is apparently so entirely ignorant of the role of the jury that she is seeking to deny the defendant – who is at risk of six months in jail – his right to a trial by jury:

Mr. Heicklen, who could face a six-month sentence if convicted, has asked for a jury trial. Ms. Mermelstein, opposing that demand, cited as one reason Mr. Heicklen’s ardent stance that juries should nullify. He would probably “urge a jury to do so in a case against him,” she wrote.

Click through for the entire article.

Letter: Are jurors aware of this power?, by Neal Weeks

After years of dissatisfaction of our court system and wondering how a judge could overturn a jury decision, or why juries seemed to have no room for personal judgment of the case they are deciding, I came across a term I had never heard before: jury nullification.

This is a powerful term which apparently is never discussed or admitted to prospective jurors or sitting jurors.

Click through for the entire letter to the editor.

Harris County’s 185th criminal court grand jury, which had been investigating problems with the BAT vans, called Culbertson to testify, along with former Harris County Prosecutor Brent Mayr. Lykos dispatched two members of her flying monkey corps – assistant DAs Carl Hobbs and Steve Morris – to “monitor” the grand jury testimony.

Since Lykos and her office were suspected of covering up the use of tainted evidence and retaliating against a whistleblower, the DA and her underlings were barred from being present in any capacity other than as sworn witnesses. Accordingly, when Lykos’s minions materialized during Culbertson’s testimony, the Grand Jury Foreman ordered them to leave. When that directive was ignored, the Foreman instructed the Baliff to remove them or place them under arrest.

“Today, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor, who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury,” wrote federal District Judge William J. Campbell in a 1973 law journal article calling for formal abolition of the institution on the grounds of redundancy. This isn’t to say that the grand jury is considered useless by the prosecutorial caste: It helps maintain the pretense that prosecutors are servants of the public will.

What is happening in Harris County is not an example of a grand jury going “rogue,” but rather one behaving exactly as it should. It is interposing itself on behalf of the public by investigating a federally subsidized revenue-collection racket, and the abusive prosecutor who presides over it. Hopefully its example will prove to be contagious.

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The festival is FREE, but organizers suggest a modest $10 donation (or whatever you deem fit) at the gate that comes with a give-a-way for your donation for you to remember the event by. Mitch will also host an outreach table starting around 11:00 am and will be there until about 6:00-7:00 pm. Volunteers are welcome to join him at the table.

Left to right: Jordan Elliot, Jessica Perkins, Mike Angelos, and Michael D. Elliot.

The Illinois Liberty Alliance entry rolled through the parade with 11 volunteers, a white Ron Paul 2012 decorated van playing Ron Paul supporting music, two FIJA banners which read, “Called for Jury Duty? Know your Rights. FIJA.ORG”, over 3,500 pieces of literature, and bags of candy and balloons. The literature included Ron Paul newspapers made by an Iowa grassroots group and Jury Rights Day cards created by the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA).

Nancy Brandt of Henry County was the coordinator of this event. “We spent 5 1/2 hours stamping the literature with “Illinois Liberty Alliance. Find us at: SuperLiberty.com”. We enjoyed walking with the banners, and we distributed 1600-1700 Jury Rights Day cards at East Moline, Illinois’ Labor Day Parade. One man I gave a card to said, ‘I better look at this. I’ve got jury duty coming up.’ I told him to go to the FIJA website.” Nancy expects the cards to be good advertising tools for their local group.

Rafe Thrasher, a Ron Paul supporter in Illinois said, “Ron Paul is a huge promoter and educator of jury rights, so it makes sense that we join forces with the local Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) and help them promote Jury Rights Day in a Labor Day parade.”

The outreach table featured FIJA outreach literature, including our brand new Fresh Air for Justice brochure, freely available for anyone to take. One of our brand new 6′ wide by 3′ high FIJA banners hung on the wall next to the table was easily visible all the way across the building. The banner was also carried in the Fair Parade kicking off the event.

Volunteers at the table were available to offer literature to passersby and to invite them to sign petitions for state initiatives, including a fully informed jury initiative. While FIJA National is a strictly educational organization that does not engage in political activities, state level groups and individuals not covered under our 501(c)3 status may do so at their discretion.

David and Leona Merrick reported that most responses to juror education outreach efforts were positive. “If they’re not in favor of jury nullification and they think that we’re kind of going against the grain, we just thank them for stopping by and for listening to our pitch. We try to give them, if they will take it, some further information on what the fully informed jury means,” David said.

“There are probably about a thousand or so, I’d guess, that we have talked to,” David estimated over the course of 4 days of outreach. He noted that they have distributed FIJA literature every year for the last few years at the fair. Several people who visited the table recognized the outreach effort from previous years.

Leona also credited FIJA’s eye-catching, yellow “We Are Everywhere” t-shirts for attracting people to the table to learn more. “I think we have passed out the most literature ever this year,” she said.

Freedom by Jury

We should be celebrating September 5 with at least as much exuberance and respect as we celebrate July 4 or Thanksgiving. It’s Jury Rights Day.

Little is made of the date. Most people are completely unaware of its historic significance and have never heard that jurors have rights. Yet it was on that date in 1670 when a group of jurors in London used their right and power to invalidate an unjust law.

We can draw a direct link between several of our First Amendment guarantees to jurors who decided that some laws are so bad that they would refuse to convict defendants prosecuted under those laws, even when directed to do so by a presiding judge.

It’s jury nullification. Some jurors risked their own freedom to exercise that right.

Click through to read the entire article.

She will be talking about Jury Rights Day and the growing need for informed jurors across the nation as government employees and politicians stray further away from the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Jurors are the primary protection of our human rights against corrupt government.

She will be commenting on the present case in Northern Idaho, regarding father who is being persecuted for protecting his children from a bear in the backyard. She will also discuss the protection that comes from our neighbors who form our juries—to protect us from the predatory, vicious actions of government, whether government is a king, a politician, a paid lackey, or a local bureaucrat who lives on your taxes.

Dick Marple, FIJA State Contact for New Hampshire, sends us this proclamation from New Hampshire Governor John H. Lynch, declaring today Jury Appreciation Day in the State of New Hampshire:

We will be featuring news of more Jury Rights Day celebrations and outreach as reports come in. To let us know about YOUR event, please e-mail us details to aji(AT)fija(DOT)org.

If you submit an editorial or letter to the editor, please be sure to send us a link to it on the web or a hard copy so we can refer to it from our website. Even if it is not published, please let us know about it as we may feature it on our website or in our newsletter!

Here’s something simple you can do RIGHT NOW to help celebrate Jury Rights Day and get the word out about the juror’s authority and responsibility in delivering justice.

Add one of our Jury Rights Day graphics to your website and link back to our site. Be sure to email us at aji(AT)fija(DOT)org to let us know where you have posted it.

Use one of these banners to show your support for Jury Rights Day. Please don’t link directly to the image. Download the image and upload it to your own website.

For those who have an event or activity scheduled, please let us know! You may e-mail aji(AT)fija(DOT)org with the details and we will be happy to help get the word out through our social media circles. We would also appreciate it if you would send a write-up on your event, with pictures if you have them, after it takes place to be featured on our website or in our newsletter. If you post video from your event, please send us those links as well!

For more ideas and resources for your outreach events and activities, please visit our Jury Rights Day page.

How will YOU be celebrating Jury Rights Day?

For those who do not yet have plans, we will be posting a variety of suggestions in the next few weeks to help you out. For those who have an event or activity scheduled, please let us know! You may e-mail aji(AT)fija(DOT)org with the details and we will be happy to help get the word out through our social media circles. We would also appreciate it if you would send a write-up on your event, with pictures if you have them, after it takes place to be featured on our website or in our newsletter. If you post video from your event, please send us those links as well!

This week we want to let you know about a very simple Jury Rights Day promotion that anyone can do. If you will be out of town for Jury Rights Day, which happens to coincide with Labor Day this year, you can still participate! For the first time, we are offering Jury Rights Day announcements in postcard size this year:

These 4.25″ X 5.5″ cards come in assorted colors, all with a glossy finish. The front of the card shows our Jury Rights Day logo, website, toll-free number, and the following text:
FIJA Activists
-Inform potential jurors of their traditional, legal authority to refuse to enforce corrupt laws;
-Inform potential jurors that they cannot be required to check their conscience at the courthouse door;
-Inform potential jurors that they cannot be punished for their verdict;
-Inform everyone to protect human rights against government tyranny.
That is FIJA’s message.

The back side of each card is blank so you can address and stamp them to mail to people or print your local organization’s information on the back to hand out at events. These cards are great for announcing Jury Rights Day events. The date is marked on the cards with no year specified. Since Jury Rights Day is on September 5th each year, if you have cards leftover this year, you can still put them to use next year.

Jury Rights Day announcement postcards can be ordered online through our Media Catalog, or you can give us a call in the office at (406) 442-7800 to order by phone. For more ideas and resources for your outreach events and activities, please visit our Jury Rights Day page.

The Sentence: A Take on the DeChristopher Case

I’m not suggesting that Benson wears jackboots, but the treatment DeChristopher got wasn’t much better than what he’d have received in a Third Reich tribunal. He was prevented from testifying—to any significant degree, anyway—that his motivation was to halt crimes against the environment, to thwart a land grab in which public-land leases were being sold at a fraction of their value (there are no “minimum bids,” and a good-old-boy system may exist among drillers), that he was prevented from later buying the properties he’d won, or that the Interior Department later invalidated most of the leases because environmental-impact studies had not been done and some parcels were within eyeshot of prized national parks.

Another example of unfairness was that the prosecution’s key witnesses said he’d been sent and read a regular flow of press clippings about DeChristopher and his group Peaceful Uprising. The content of those items, however, was never made available to the jury.

I attended the July 26 sentencing hearing expecting more of the same. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that DeChristopher and his attorneys were finally allowed to say what they would have been able to present at trial if we didn’t live in an age when judges can pre-censor exactly what a jury hears and deprive it of material facts needed to come to a fair verdict. The jurors’ historical options should have included the power to void the charges altogether due to the unfairness of the law itself … a basic principle of Common Law called jury nullification.

I won’t go into the details of DeChristopher’s eloquent address, but I thought it had fallen on completely deaf ears since Benson’s remarks that followed were a sermon on the necessity for all citizens to bend to the rule of law and operate only within the system to work for change.

Is the tampering of Nevada’s Federal Grand jury rooted in psychological disorders? That is a question being asked by Network CEO Phil Stimac after a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones that he and not the grand jury has the right to weigh and act upon grand jury evidence.

Click through for entire article.

Man Found Guilty Of Violating Anthony Free Speech Zones

An Orange County man who believes jurors can ignore laws they disagree with was sentenced to jail time for his efforts to spread the word about his beliefs.

Judge Belvin Perry found Mark Schmidter guilty of contempt of court charges.

Man who distributed fliers during Casey Anthony trial is sentenced

Roofing contractor Mark Schmidter learned the hard way Tuesday what can happen when you defy the administrative orders of Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry.

Following a trial Tuesday, Perry found Schmidter guilty of “indirect criminal contempt” for violating two such orders. One deals with handing out pamphlets outside the courthouse aimed at influencing jurors. The other prohibits First Amendment activities outside specially designated “free-speech zones.”

Perry sentenced Schmidter, 64, to roughly five months in the Orange County Jail — 141 days for violating his first order, regarding jury pamphlets, and 151 days for his second order, regarding free-speech zones. The sentences are concurrent. Perry also handed him a $250 fine for each violation.

Unfortunately, Schmidter was sentenced to 5 months in jail out of a maximum possible 6 months.

We encourage everyone to obey the unconstitutional orders as long as they are in force, to challenge them through appropriate channels, and to share FIJA’s message with everyone in Orlando and the rest of Florida except for Perry’s tiny turf.

An indication of the sad state of journalism is how often when people show support for the Casey Anthony verdict they are labeled as Casey Anthony supporters. But they could very well be supporting just one thing. That would be to accept the “not guilty” verdict. It is, after all, the result of an arguably elaborate jury trial in what is supposedly an entirely legitimate court of law. Once the jury reached its verdict, Anthony and any other accused person must be regarded not guilty as charged, in her instance primarily of murder. She wasn’t judged innocent, which would require omniscience on the jury’s part. Like her or not, believe what you will, the process that one must go through in this kind of situation resulted in “not guilty.”

It is odd that standing up for the result once it is reached is considered supporting Casey Anthony. Only in one respect is it a kind of “support.” That is, that within the framework of the criminal law, the case against the accused wasn’t made successfully. She wasn’t shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Click through for the full article.

From:
Mark A. Hiselman
Michigan Coordinator
Fully Informed Jury Association
2231 Manchester Rd
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Tel: +1.734.973.0925
Cell: +1.734.657.5439
www.fija.org/aie653l

Mark A. Hiselman from the Fully Informed Jury Association of Michigan of Michigan (www.fija.org/aie653l) will speak on the topic of Jury Nullification on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at Steve’s Ranch Restaurant, 311 W Louis Glick Hwy, Jackson, MI 49201. He will be the guest speaker at the Jackson (Michigan) Tea Party, which meets from 6:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.

The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by government.

The Constitution guarantees the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty or property. Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict.

Every once-in-awhile events occur that provide some optimism that real people – rather than the sock-puppets who speak on behalf of institutional interests – have a firm grip on reality. The jury in the Casey Anthony trial did precisely what they were directed to do by the court: deliberated on the evidence presented to them, and concluded that there was not the requisite degree of certitude to allow them to find this woman guilty of the murder charges brought against her.

This was more than the percaled agents of “justice” could take. They know a “guilty” person when they see one: it’s whoever is charged with a crime by the state! The cable-TV bobbleheads – let’s call them Dennis Dullard and Amelia Airhead – began screaming for vengeance, . . . not so much against Ms. Anthony, but against the jurors! Their screeches of rage were echoed by other lobotomized voices, one of whom urged doing away with the jury system altogether. Charles Dickens’ Madame Defarge was resurrected! Another shrieked at the “idiots on the jury,” while another asked the most irrelevant question as it pertained to this defendant: “who killed Caylee then?”

Read more at LewRockwell.com