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Posted on 02/18/2026 7:44:10 AM PST by MtnClimber
A jury is a modest institution. Twelve citizens sit in a box. They listen. They deliberate. They apply the law as instructed. Then they render a verdict. The jury is not a legislature. It is not an executive. It is not a protest movement. It is a fact finding body embedded in a constitutional structure that presupposes something simple and fragile, that law governs us all.
That modest picture is now under strain. In recent months, a small but organized network of progressive NGOs has begun to train potential jurors to view their service not as a duty of fidelity to enacted law but as an opportunity for resistance. The pitch is explicit. Jury duty is described as a political tool. Jurors are encouraged to “influence outcomes” in order to protect targeted communities from the agenda of a democratically elected President. Trainings and teach ins are advertised in Washington DC. Toolkits circulate nationally. Immigration enforcement is a focal point. The idea is clear enough. If you disapprove of the law, you may block its application by refusing to convict.
To understand why this development is alarming, one must begin with a neutral point. Jury nullification is not new. Anglo American legal history contains episodes in which juries refused to convict under laws they regarded as unjust. English juries declined to punish seditious libel in the 18th century. American juries sometimes resisted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. During Prohibition, acquittals were common in certain jurisdictions. Advocates cite these episodes as evidence that nullification is a democratic safety valve. They describe it as the conscience of the community made visible.
That is the romantic picture. It imagines isolated acts of moral courage, rare and spontaneous. A jury confronts an egregious prosecution and quietly refuses to cooperate. The act is bounded, contextual, and exceptional. The system absorbs the anomaly and moves on.
The present movement is different. It is organized. It is replicable. It is taught. It is explicitly partisan. That difference matters.
Consider the structure. Democrat NGOs in DC host recurring “juror information” sessions. They frame jury service as a means to judge the administration’s agenda. A separate project publishes a reusable jury nullification module, complete with presentations and handouts, and invites activists to run their own workshops. In Minneapolis, an anti ICE organization schedules a nullification training and directs participants to those materials. Professional defense networks host webinars on “the power of jury nullification.” The infrastructure resembles a franchise model. A core toolkit is produced. Local chapters adapt it. The message is consistent. Jury service is leverage.
If this were merely theoretical, it would be troubling enough. But there are signs that the strategy is bearing fruit in particular jurisdictions. Nationally, between 90% and 95%+ of federal defendants are convicted, whether by plea or trial. The system, whatever its flaws, overwhelmingly produces guilty verdicts when charges are brought. Yet in Los Angeles, in cases involving anti ICE protesters accused of attacking federal officers, the pattern diverges sharply.
In the Central District of California, US Attorney Bill Essayli charged 18 anti ICE protesters with offenses arising from confrontations with federal agents. None of those cases has led to a conviction. In every case that proceeded to trial, Los Angeles juries refused to convict. If even a fraction of those acquittals reflect jurors who entered the box primed to treat enforcement itself as illegitimate, then the shift from abstract training to concrete outcome is complete. The jury ceases to be a neutral arbiter of fact and becomes a localized veto point against federal law.
One might object. Is this not merely civic education. Citizens have a right to learn about the history and power of juries. That is true. The First Amendment protects general discussion. But the line between abstract civics and strategic influence is thin. When trainings are timed and located to coincide with high profile prosecutions, when organizers speak of protecting communities from political persecution, when jury duty is described as a way to stop federal enforcement, the message is not neutral. It is tactical. The funding streams behind these efforts underscore the point. These NGOs are not merely sustained by small donor enthusiasm or even by Soros linked funding networks that have long backed progressive legal activism. They are also connected to transnational financial networks associated with Neville Roy Singham, who is based in Shanghai, China, and who is married to Jodie Evans, the founder of Code Pink. When organizations training jurors to obstruct federal enforcement are supported by money flowing through networks tied to a Chinese Communist Party aligned ecosystem, the issue ceases to be parochial. It becomes a question of whether domestic adjudication is being strategically sabotaged by actors whose interests are openly hostile to the current administration and, in some cases, aligned with foreign power structures.
The rule of law depends on a simple principle, that legal outcomes track legal standards rather than factional identity. A criminal statute is enacted by representatives elected by the people. It is interpreted by courts. It is applied to facts found by juries. Each institution has a role. When jurors are urged to substitute their partisan commitments for the law as instructed, they cease to function as fact finders. They become ad hoc legislators.
Imagine a sculptor holding a finished statue. If we reject the possibility that both the statue and the lump of clay exist, we must choose one description. Likewise, if we reject the idea that juries both find facts and make policy, we must choose which function defines them. The constitutional design chooses the former. It assigns policy making to Congress and the President. It assigns fact finding to juries. To collapse those roles is to blur the structure.
Defenders of organized nullification will reply that juries have always possessed the power to acquit against the evidence. That is correct. Power is not the same as right. The system cannot easily punish acquittals. Double jeopardy prevents retrial. Deliberations are secret. Appellate review is limited. This opacity is part of the jury’s independence. It is also its vulnerability. Because partisan nullification is structurally unreviewable, even a small number of motivated activists can produce effects that are difficult to detect and impossible to correct.
Suppose a single activist juror, trained to see her role as resistance, enters deliberations in an immigration related prosecution. The evidence is clear. The law is clear. She refuses to convict, not because the facts are in doubt but because she opposes the statute. A mistrial results. The government must decide whether to retry the case. Resources are limited. Witnesses are fatigued. Over time, prosecutors may decline to bring similar cases in that jurisdiction. The statute remains on the books. Its practical force evaporates. This is not legislative repeal. It is functional nullification.....SNIP
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It seems the Chinese are active participants with the democRATs in the color revolution against President Trump.
Last time I checked President Donald Trump is meeting President Xi Jinping in China in April.
What’s the purpose of putting out this kind of story ahead of the diplomacy?
They should not be allowed in the country. I support Pinochet flights.
.
“They apply the law as instructed. Then they render a verdict. The jury is not a legislature. It is not an executive. It is not a protest movement. “
Incorrect. They do NOT apply the law as instructed by a Judge if they see injustice. They are the ultimate defense, the final wall against an abuse of government. In that sense it CAN override a legislature, it CAN override and executive (the prosecutor).
Jury nullification is not the problem. The problem is that WE do not use it ourselves. There are plenty of places we should use it, self defense cases like the Soldier Uber Driver wrongfully convicted in Austin Tx for self defense when a BLM protester shoved an AK into his window. The Trump Trials are another. Jan 6 protester trials are another. The Covid prosecutions are another. People charged in abortion clinic protests should walk free.
The whole pathological leftist prosecution machine could grind to a halt if informed conservatives started shutting down prosecutions by holding out for a not guilty.
We do not need new rules regarding juries. You wanna end the leftist crap? Then start a legacy American conservative version of the Fully Informed Jury movement. Make sure every juror knows they do NOT have to convict no matter what a judge instructs. Even if they prove every jot and tittle of the law happened.
The final voice IS a jury. We can use it as much as they can.
1) Centralization result. In the 1960s local government deported undesireables. No court action. To be in the US is a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT. No RIGHTs were violated.
Local government also ran welfare programs, education, etc.
Mostly due to LBJ and Nixon, immigration and much else was centralized in the Federal Government. Now we see the consequences and don’t like it.
Trump is further centralizing government...allegedly on our side, which is short term. But long term centralization is itself a problem.
2) Morgan & Morgan and trial lawyers in general have been doing this “TRIAL PREPARATION” for years, both in mass media ads and in targeted donations to jury pool candidates. They started with injury liability suits. But Morgan & Morgan now dominates what is left of the Democrat Party and puts its stamp on the party.
In retrospect, I think that in the past, I was somewhat unfair to Pinochet.
How many times have the four boxes of freedom (soap box, ballot box, jury box and finally cartridge box) been discussed here?
I was excused from jury duty after voir dire when the jury pool was asked if anyone had heard of jury nullification, and I gave far too much explanation of it. Was that the reason? Who knows.
The author should look at Sparf v. United States from 1895. Before that case judges regularly told juries they ruled on both the facts and the law of the case. Afterwards, judges claimed that only they had power to rule on the law.
Jury Nullification
It has been a tool for the people for hundreds of years.
It used to be a favorite of the right.
Why is the leadership in this nation allowing all of these things to happen? Oh, right, they are just doing what their employer tells them to do. Whoever is letting this happen needs to be executed.
That was exactly the reason. I worked as a court interpreter (not here in Texas) for several years. Watched it all happen. Learned. If a person demonstrates too much knowledge and the ability to PERSUADE with that knowledge, (s)he is usually stricken from the jury pool very quickly. This ESPECIALLY relates to a person showing skill at persuasive discussion.
Yes, if you want to be excused from jury duty, just drop the n-word. “Nullification”, that is, not that other one.
I know you want to believe CCP is your frewnd but it ain't.
“The final voice IS a jury. We can use it as much as they can.“
Can’t the judge set aside the jury decision if he thinks it out of line? I’ve heard of cases where such was done. Don’t know the specifics.
bump
there was a lot of support for this just a couple years ago, even saw much of it here in the form of stuff like that “If I was on that jury....”
What happened?
Become a Trump donor.
You might not even be called.
We haven’t received a jury summons in a decade.
What happens if jury commissioners are checking FEC records, which are easily accessible public information.
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