Posted on 12/23/2010 2:08:41 PM PST by FTJM
A New Jersey man whose seven-year prison sentence was commuted this week and is now seeking to get his felony gun charge conviction overturned blamed judicial "bullying" for his guilty verdict.
Brian Aitken told Fox News on Thursday that he is armed with an e-mail he claims he received earlier this week from a juror who told him that then-Superior Court Judge James Morley pushed the jury into obtaining a conviction.
"Interestingly enough, I got an e-mail from one of the jurors a night or two ago, and he told me, 'You know, we all pretty much knew what was going on. We knew the judge was bullying us to this position. That's why we came back three times and asked for the exemptions,'" Aitken said.
Aitken, an entrepreneur and media consultant with no prior criminal record, was arrested in January 2009 in New Jersey for possession of two locked and unloaded handguns he legally purchased in Colorado but didn't have a carry permit for in the Garden State.
He was later convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in August. But after serving four months in a New Jersey prison, the cause célèbre for gun advocates was released after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie commuted the sentence on Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Why didn’t the governor pardon him?
Would that have not wiped his record clean?
Could have done that purposely so he could file a lawsuit and attack NJ’s gun laws. Maybe Christie doesn’t think he could do enough from his end.
Yeah, ultimately the law was wrong. That’s not what pardons are for. Pardons are for when the law was right..
Why, oh why do we tolerate this kind of behavior from judges? Anymore this country is ruled by judges and if you go check your Bible you’ll see that when Israel was ruled by judges it was a punishment from God.
I believe that, one day soon, we'll be experiencing our own homegrown version of the Argentinian "desaparecidos."
The jury failed as well. When the “judge” refused to give them the exceptions the jury should have come back not guilty.
As I heard from a different source, Aitken only asked Gov.Christie for the commutation. As other have speculated, it might be in order to retain the “legal standing” that is required to pursue this case further. I am glad he is out and this is indeed an injustice that should never have happened.
One thing though for consideration ... does anybody think that Christie’s 2009 opponent, Gov. Jon Corzine, would have done anything?!?! Elections have both large and small results but for Mr.Aitkin, I will bet that he is really happy with 2009’s election!
Indeed, allowing judges to make their own factual determinations and use those to decide what the jury is allowed to hear, renders meaningless the right to trial by jury. One thing that's missing amidst the increasing talk of "jury nullification" is that in many cases, jurors who refuse to convict someone, supposedly on the basis of nullification, are upholding the law, in contrast to judges who seek to undermine it.
One thing that would go a long way to restoring the Constitution would be a recognition of defendants' right to have any and all relevant factual matters determined by a jury (including, generally, the relevance of particular factual matters). When a judge makes a factual determination and uses that as a basis for withholding information that would have led a jury to acquit, it is not the jury but the judge who tries the case.
Unfortunately, it is common today for appellate judges to make advance factual determinations which will be applied to cases that haven't even been heard yet. If an appellate judge declares that in some particular case it was reasonable for a cop to force entry into a dwelling five seconds after knocking on the door, that will be applied as a factual finding that any forced entry which occurs at least five seconds after some kind of "knock" is reasonable, never mind that the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a particular entry in some future case may depend upon factors completely beyond anything the appellate judge had seen.
If a cop conducts a search in a way that is even remotely reasonable, he should have no trouble convicting a jury of that. If a jury that's informed of all the facts surrounding a search would deem it unreasonable, it is, regardless of whether or not anything else about it had been judicially found unacceptable.
Likewise, it seems courts get all tied up in questions of what constitutes an "excessive" fine, or "cruel and unusual" punishment. Here again, the answer is simple. If the jury which has examined all the facts surrounding a case would regard a particular punishment as excessive, it would be. While it is reasonable for judges to have considerable say in sentencing, the jury needs to serve as a final check. If a jury finds that someone committed a crime, but does not find remotely credible a state's witness who testifies that the crime was particularly heinous, it would be unjust to sentence the person particularly harshly on the basis of that testimony. To allowing a judge to assign a sentence without it having to clear the jury would be to allow the judge to apply his own judgment, rather than that of the jury, to a major factual determination.
If by this you mean one day soon we’ll see activist judges disappearing from the bench, then I’m all for it.
However, I more expect that what you mean is that we’re on the cusp of having judges order people ‘disappeared’ for, say, posting things critical of judges on FR.
“The jury failed as well. When the “judge” refused to give them the exceptions the jury should have come back not guilty.”
AGREED! Don’t ANY jurors know about the Fully Informed Jury Associatioion? FIJA? The US Supreme Court ruled back about 1880 that ALL jurors have the right to judge the LAW, not just the facts. Unfortunately, they did NOT rule that jurors had to be INFORMED of that right! For more info, go to: http://fija.org/
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