Posted on 02/25/2011 10:52:20 AM PST by Second Amendment First
*
Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience.
That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf when he refused to say how he would plead. During the proceeding, he railed at the judge and the government, and called the indictment “a tissue of lies.”
Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.
But he feels his message must be getting out, or the government would not have brought charges against him.
“If I weren’t having any effect, would they do this?” said Mr. Heicklen, whose former colleagues recall him as a talented and unconventional educator. “You don’t have to be a genius to figure this thing out.”
Prosecutors declined to comment on his case, as did Sabrina Shroff, a lawyer who was assigned to assist Mr. Heicklen. (He is acting as his own lawyer.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
YES! No person charged with trespassing at n abortion mill while attempting to deter women from killing their babies should ever be convicted.
It is a cumulative effect. The rights lost during Prohibition were never restored, only added to in the War on Drugs. Likewise, except for a brief lapse immediately after Watergate, the size and power of the intelligence (16 agencies) and federal police (50+ agencies) has continued to grow unabated.
The Patriot Act and related legislation has opened the gates wide, under the guise of anti-terrorism, but in practice, over 99% of the time used for conventional criminal investigations, and non-criminal investigations, sometimes called “fishing expeditions”, of innocent citizens not suspected of any offense.
Add to that the compilation of enormous numbers of government and private dossier databases, which combined with sophisticated data mining software, leave the typical citizen defenseless against the unethical and even criminal.
Jury nullification is about finding people not guilty of crimes they committed. It's called nullification because it effectively nullifies the law the person is technically guilty of breaking. Jury nullification by definition does not result in a conviction for appearance or any other reason.
I think I get your objection now, but it doesn't apply. Jury nullification is absolutely based on the facts, and is not supposed to be arbitrary, nor is the power supposed to be leveraged lightly capriciously. It is supposed to be an act of conscience or protest.
This false distinction didn't always exist. For centuries, juries were considered to be able to decide based on the law and facts of the case. Everything was presented to the jury, thus the jury could decide on the whole of the case with all of the facts, including being able to decide whether the current case is a misapplication of the law, or the application of a bad law.
Then judges started discussing evidence exclusion in chambers, away from the jury. That was reasonable, you don't want to prejudice the jury with evidence that couldn't legally be used against the defendant. That's equivalent to jury tampering by the prosecution. Then the chamber and bench discussions grew to encompass almost everything. Now juries only see and hear exactly what the judge wants them to. The judges literally took away a power of the people and gave it to themselves for their exclusive exercise.
Those who bring up O.J. as an indictment of the right of jury nullification fail to acknowledge that the case is a clear perversion of it. I seriously doubt anyone on the jury would publicly state that laws against murder are unjust. They may have reason to believe that prosecutorial misconduct has led to the accusation being lodged against an innocent man, but then, you've left the realm of jury nullification.
I strongly recommend that each of us take part when called up to serve on a jury. As citizens, it is a solemn duty, because it is our one chance to actually judge the law itself as well as the accused.
So much for 1st amendment freedom of speech. Theses Federal prosecutors need to be fired without delay.
Dilemas, dilemas...
It’s been tried before and it will never go to trial..
How do you prosecute the man without educating the jury about nullification
I see very many interesting comments and reflections on history in the posts here. I think jury nullification is a sound priciple provided we heed and apply the words of John Adams that our Constitution (and the justice system itself) was designed for a moral people and unfit for any other. A corrupt people will render injustice just as surely as a corrupt judge.
This week Obama ordered his Attorney General to stop defending a law that he disagrees with.
Anyone see a slippery slope of hypocrisy here?
I do not support "jury nullification." I sat on a case where one juror believed everyone had the right to threaten murder upon a spouse during a physical argument and that it shouldn't warrant a criminal charge. He argued that viewpoint in the jury room and when told he couldn't, he then claimed he didn't believe the act had happened. It wasn't a question of whether the act happened: the accused admitted it on the witness stand! We were 11-1 on that charge.
John Jay said that although they had the right, they should give deference to the court.
The OJ Jury is a great example of how Jury Nullification does work very well. What failed there was the jury selection process.
But say we are jury selected in the case of a man brought up on charges possibly because he was a member of currently extremely prosecuted religious group, where such trumps charges are in the time and place, common. Say a Coptic Christian in Cairo. It I’m a Copt on that jury in Cairo, I am NOT going to convict if there is even an wacky outside chance the Copt did not cut his wife’s head off.
A less inflammatory and REAL example would be that jury in south Jersey some months ago who were directed by the vile (now retired) Judge to consider only the facts presented to them in trial per the law as he spelled it out to them. The case was a man who was moving to north Jersey and had his guns in his trunk to move them to his new place — that is allowed under even the very strict New Jersey law.
He was stopped and his guns discovered by police, still it was a permissible action. But the police and prosecutors of that district for whatever reason — likely animosity towards citizen RKBA — arrested him and he went to trial on serious felony charges.
The Judge refused to allow testimony that the man was carrying the guns for the legal (in NJ) purpose of moving to a new place. The Jury was sympathetic to the man. Three times they came back to ask to clarify the law, or ask for other facts, they did ask if they could nullify. The Judge said that they must rule according to (evilly limited) facts heard in the court and the law as he had stated it — the Judge firm, even demanding and perhaps rude and abusive to the Jury in his demeanor. Clearly, imo, he was dominating them to force a particular verdict.
The Jury did abide the Judge’s direction. They found the defendant guilty. He went to jail.
THAT JURY NEEDED TO KNOW IT COULD NULLIFY.
What happened to that man was a perversion of Justice. Abuse!
It wasn’t by some OJ Jury, it was by a respected and long-serving Judge.
That’s WHY Justice needs Jury Nullification.
And that means?
We had a far more moral country then than we have now. If our judges and laws were idealogically faithful to the Constitution, I would agree, but unfortunately some worship a differnt idealogy, and it’s more widespread now than during Jay’s time.
Jury nullification is a violation of an oath.
That’s fine, if your word means nothing, especially when sworn before God.
You are crazy. The jury is part of the justice system not the ultimate arbiter. The system is designed so that no one component is the ultimate arbiter. That is what makes it great. Being on a jury is NOT an opportunity to seize power to force one's opinions; it is QUITE the opposite. But you would have to have some humility and some intelligence to understand that.
An oath to God is not an oath to enforce an unjust law. Only the morally confused would see it that way.
You’re the one who is morally confused, and uninformed to boot. Give me an example of an “unjust law” that you would nullify as a juror, violating your oath.
>>Indeed. We wouldn’t want a society in which people relied on objective facts to plan their behavior.
It is a much better system when people make up the rules as they go.<<
If that is what you got out of my posts, you are missing my point. One must not only weigh objective facts, but also determine which are of more importance than others. And each of us has the right (and responsibility) to make that determination for ourselves, when on a jury.
>>I assume, by the way, you are perfectly comfortable with plaintiffs receiving large verdicts in personal injury cases?
Someone spills coffee on their lap and gets a $100 million verdict. Totally cool with you?<<
Quite the opposite.
>>I assume, by the way, you are perfectly comfortable with plaintiffs receiving large verdicts in personal injury cases?
Someone spills coffee on their lap and gets a $100 million verdict. Totally cool with you?<<
Quite the opposite.
In both the cases I was on, it was ambulance chaser lawsuits, and in superior court. In both cases the plaintiff lost. In one of those cases I was a driving factor in the jury room.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.