In march of 2023, Trudi Warner, a retired social worker, was arrested in London for holding a banner reading: “Jurors you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.” When 24 other activists held similar signs in protest, they were referred to the Attorney General on the same grounds. Other arrests would be made of protesters holding the same message, including of Laura Kaarina Korte, a young lawyer.
In fury at the work of jury nullification activists, Judge Silas Reid threatened jurors in a trial of five environmentalists that applying their conscience to the evidence in a case would itself constitute a crime. Certain facts he had allowed in prior trials led to acquittals, so he thereupon refused to allow juries to hear such facts. This draconian curtailment of a jury’s right to be informed arguably led one environmentalist facing trial before Reid, Xavier Gonzales-Trimmer, to take his own life.
Defend Our Juries was formed by these UK environmentalists to educate about the right of jury nullification, and while its origin differs from FIJA’s in libertarianism and the civil rights struggle, we share much in common. Both the US and UK legal system are founded on ancient struggles for the right of juries. Jury nullification was campaigned for by Quakers and Levellers in the UK, in a period where there were no modern distinctions between leftists and libertarians, and the legacy of that struggle inspired early Americans. Beyond this shared history, we share in facing repression around basic free speech.
The present campaign of repression against juries and jury education activists in the UK is immensely salient to FIJA, as we have seen our own activists repeatedly arrested, threatened, and silenced since our formation in 1989.
In November of 2010 while Julian Heicklen was sharing FIJA brochures outside the Southern District Court of New York, an undercover FBI agent came out posing as a juror to engage Heicklen in conversation. The agent attempted to entrap Heicklen by talking about current court cases. Heicklen refused to discuss any case in progress, but was arrested and charged with jury tampering nonetheless.
During a long-term FIJA general education campaign in Florida in 2011, the high-profile trial of Casey Anthony began. As a result, Judge Belvin Perry issued an onerous anti-free speech order prohibiting our pamphleteering at the Orange-Osceola County Courthouse. He later followed up with another order defining an obscure “free speech” zone. These orders were not uniformly enforced. Mark Schmidter had been handing out pamphlets periodically over the course of nearly a year, and was not doing anything related to the Casey Anthony trial, yet he was arrested and charged with contempt. Schmidter was not permitted a trial by jury. Instead, he was tried by the judge whose orders he was alleged to have violated, found guilty, and sentenced to several months in jail with additional fines.
Similarly, in September 2012 our former executive director, Kirsten Tynan was threatened with arrest for handing out FIJA literature. She asked where she might hand out brochures. First the marshal told her she could hand them out at the library several blocks down the street, but then later that marshal claimed that no matter where she was handing them out, if a juror came into possession of one, she would be guilty of jury tampering.
In the midst of his campaign for Greene County Sheriff, Republican Luke Lamb was prosecuted for sharing a link to our website and making other comments on jury nullification on Facebook in response to inquiry from a friend. The individual at the time happened to be serving as a juror on a trial, which ultimately resulted in acquittal. Lamb was prosecuted for jury tampering and demanded his right to trial by jury. His jury acquitted him.
Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt were arrested and each charged with seven counts each of felony jury tampering for sharing FIJA’s brochures in the public area outside of the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver, CO. The charges were all eventually dismissed by the court.
Two days before Thanksgiving in 2016, Keith Wood was arrested and charged with felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor jury tampering for sharing FIJA’s Your Jury Rights: True or False? brochure on the public sidewalk adjacent to the Mecosta County Courthouse in Michigan. And
He was originally held on $150,000 bond. The obstruction of justice charge was dismissed by a judge. Unfortunately Wood was convicted by a jury of misdemeanor jury tampering, even though no jurors were seated and no jury trial took place on the day he was pamphleting.
These are just a small sampling of repression faced by those in the US for educating the public on their rights.
While a vast gulf no doubt exists between the personal politics of Trudi Warner and Luke Lamb, the right to educate about jury nullification and the right of jurors to acquit from conscience should be uncontroversial.
As state power continues to grow out of control on both sides of the Atlantic, it is more vital than ever that we preserve this check on it.
FIJA unreservedly denounces the state violence inflicted on jury nullification activists in the UK. The struggle for liberty knows no borders or colors. We are all in this together.
