The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) condemns the investigation announced on October 13 by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer into two Washington, D.C. community organizations, Free DC and Harriet's Wildest Dreams, over public workshops that educate residents about their rights and powers as jurors.
Chairman Comer's letters demand that these groups turn over internal communications, training materials, recordings, funding records, and lists of the people who attended their public events by October 27. The groups are not accused of contacting a sitting juror, tampering with a trial, or breaking any law. Neither letter cites one. The offense, as the committee describes it, is teaching ordinary people what juries can do.
That is not oversight. It is an attempt to intimidate citizens out of learning about a protection that has been part of Anglo-American law for centuries.
Jurors cannot be punished for their verdicts, and an acquittal cannot be appealed. These are not loopholes. They are deliberate features of a system designed to place the people between the government and the accused. Juries refused to convict John Peter Zenger for criticizing a colonial governor. Northern juries refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Juries refused to convict under Prohibition. The power of the jury to say "not guilty" when the law or its application is unjust is the reason the jury exists.
Telling people this is protected speech. Demanding the names of everyone who attended a public talk about it should alarm Americans of every political persuasion. Whoever holds power today, the precedent being set is that a congressional committee may compile lists of citizens who attended lectures on their constitutional role, based on nothing more than newspaper articles.
This investigation does not stand alone. Rep. Julia Letlow's H.R. 8485, the so-called "No Rogue Jurors Act," which would cut federal funding to any organization that educates the public about jury nullification, sits in Chairman Comer's own committee. Together, these efforts amount to a campaign to keep jurors uninformed about the powers they already hold.
If Congress is concerned about juror impartiality, the remedy already exists: voir dire, conducted by judges and attorneys in open court. The remedy is not political surveillance of educators and the people who listen to them.
FIJA has defended jury rights across the political spectrum for more than three decades, on behalf of defendants of every stripe. We stand with every organization that informs citizens of their rights as jurors, and we call on Chairman Comer to withdraw these demands, and on members of both parties to reject H.R. 8485.
The jury box belongs to the people, not congress.
