Posted on 05/18/2009 9:41:14 AM PDT by fightinbluhen51
Jury Nullification and the 2nd Amendment A Program For Rights Restoration Copyright 2007, Guy Smith
Introduction “ . . . 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.” John Adams, 1771
You have the ability to overturn any anti-gun law you want. All it takes is a bit of knowledge and a seat on a jury.
In our legal system, juries have a power known as “nullification”. This means that any single juror may refuse to convict a defendant of a crime if that juror believes the law in question is unconstitutional. In effect, a jury can overturn any act of congress or any decision of the Supreme Court.
And you thought the game was rigged! It is. It is rigged in favor of the average citizen. History of jury nullification “The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, 1794 The concept of jury nullification was present in English common law and exercised in America before the revolution.
In London, William Penn was tried in 1671 for the crime of preaching an “illegal” religion. His jury was rightfully incensed and refused to convict him, despite being denied by the court food, water and toilet facilities for several days. The jury was later fined and imprisoned for failing to convict Penn until England’s highest court confirmed their right to nullify the law. And you thought our legal system was heavy handed!
(Excerpt) Read more at gunfacts.info ...
The judges always try to do that. Its funny though, they cant sit n the jury room. And a juror cannot be held to answer for their vote, except something like bribery.
Its a POWERFUL weapon we need to use as conservatives.
“If a juror is willing to engage in jury nullification but doesn’t admit that when the judge makes the above inquiry, and is picked as a juror on a specific trial, and then refuses to convict as an act of nullification, I believe that juror would be replaced and/or charged with contempt of court”.
Not really. You just debate endlessly. You know in your mind you will never vote guilty. Argue it till they give up and are deadlocked. No need at all to announce you are engaging in “jury nullification”. No juror announced that after the OJ trial.
A judge cant hold you in contempt for voting not guilty. Only refusal to deliverate does that. So deliberate away.
You think the cop wasnt telling the truth, just from the look on his face,,, etc etc.
Get it?
Well hell, you don’t crow about it during questioning BEFORE the trial. Be the nicest, most compliant, nost agreeable, open minded person on earth then. Go Jekyll and Hyde on em once you are there.
IE,, like the other poster said. Say you think pot should be legal. You DONT helpfully point that out on your questionaire unless you are a well known author on the topic or something. You just say yes, i can be fair. Then go in the jury room and make a conviction iompossible.
You never tell a soul. It has the added benefit of making prosecutors and judges sprout gray hair!
Its a dirty world. Against a depotic government, you use what works. If they are not sticking to the constitution, im not going to let their little legalistic “oath” slow me down.
The Constitution is whats sacred. Not an illegal oath to a judge.
So you actually believe that if SCOTUS says the moon is green cheese, we should all act as if it were? And in this case, you can even do the right thing and there’s nothing they can do about it. What’s the problem? Jury nullification is well established as being accepted among the founders, so if today’s statists don’t like it, too bad. In fact so much the better. As far as I’m concerned, they’d have to pass a Constitutional amendment to override what was even an accepted practice back then, even if not explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. Oh, and IANAL either, so this is just common sense, not legal advice.
The RIGHT one (which one that is will vary from case to case).
In fact the Supreme Court assumed they could judge the law.
It was an appealable error of the court if they did not so instruct the jury, until a case, I think it was Sparf, Hanson vs US, decided in 1895
In fact it just about totally undermines our system of law.
The point being that you can be convicted of a crime ONLY if TWELVE OF YOUR PEERS UNANIMOUSLY AGREE that you did it and it WAS IN FACT A CRIME.
The government can’t have that. The government, in order to keep control, has to have the power to TELL YOU what constitutes a crime.
I mean if you don’t wear your seat belt or something, and one of the twelve thinks to himself “Well, there’s no victim, so there’s no crime”, then the gummint can’t very well rack up serious bucks for fines and harassing the citizenry, now can they?
A truly free people MUST have the right of juror nullification. I didn’t believe that in my youth. I understand the wisdom and necessity of it now that I am older and have seen how corrupt laws can be so easily created by a government that has lost its respect for the people it is supposed to serve.
Living without jury nullification has given us things like mandatory sentencing, zero tolerance, inadmissible evidence etc. Sometimes they’re good but the jury should decide that, not some law that was written without consideration of each individual case.
In effect we have a situation where a jury is just for show if they’re only doing what the court tells them to do.
Yes, but we have the power to decide whether we believe their version or not, and any juror with an IQ over 80 should recognize that fact.
Think so, eh?
I believe it is SOP in any court that during the Judges Jury instruction he specifically tells them “I will tell you what the law is... you decide the facts”
Yes it is, in clear abeyance of history and SCOTUS decisions. Now while I don’t think it’s a good state of affairs that he can sit there and lie to you and not wind up in a cell the next morning with some pervert he sentenced, so what? Do you think he can climb inside your head inside the jury room and defy your ability to nullify if you choose to do so? If he said the moon was made of green cheese, would that statement affect in any way the chemical composition of the moon?
I’ve been on FR long enough to know that someone will correct me if I’m wrong but jury nullification involves more than just a single juror - thus “jury nullification” and not “juror nullification”. A single juror refusing to convict someone guilty under the letter of the law would result in a hung jury, a mistrial, and subsequent retrial of the defendant. In order for jury nullification to occur, the juror would have to convince all his peers to vote not guilty in the face of the law. IOW, the job would be to put the unjust law on trial within the jury room without prompting someone to “squeal” to the judge.
Jury nullification was hijacked by the communists in the 1960’s in the Oakland 7 case (Charles R. Garry, CPUSA attorney and later Hillary’s boss on the Black Panther New Haven torture murder trial) and then in the Chicago 7 trial.
COmrade Bill Kunstler told a group of us in March 1969 that the Oakland 7 trial was a trial run of tactics to see if they could so disrupt the judge, the witnesses, and the court as a whole (including warping or disrupting the jury) to the point that a mistrial had to be declared.
It worked beyond their wildest dreams and most conspiracy cases against communist agitators and even violent offenders ended in mistrials or acquittals. This was esp. true of criminal tresspass cases on college campuses (including Jimmy Carter’s daughter) using a tactic of disruption based on “imminent danger” of a nuclear war, use of armed force against a foreign enemy, etc.
This is one double-edged sword most Americans never saw until it stabbed them in the back.
Well, just don't play like you're any better than they are then. You're just embracing a different version of "the Constitution doesn't work in my circumstances, therefore I'll ignore it."
We demand that others--judges, liberals, etc.--uphold the Constitution even when they don't like it, even when it goes against what they personally believe. Why do we expect less from ourselves?
The Constitution is whats sacred. Not an illegal oath to a judge.
Illegal? How? What law does that oath violate?
And, last I checked, the oath is in God's name, not the judge's.
And such an oath is not sacred? Maybe in your universe.
Anything I raise my right hand to and swear "so help me God" is an absolute, binding responsibility to me from then on.
If you have any honesty left over, mention to the judge that you don't consider your sworn oath to be binding.
I have been the jury FORMAN on a firearms case, where I could only bring one other for a acquittal. Our fellow citizens are idiots...
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