Posted on 01/25/2003 11:47:19 AM PST by forest
Over the years, I have written a lot on the subject of "Boxing Liberty." Heck, I'm on my "soap box" nearly every week and often write about the ballot box and the cartridge box. Few, however, including me, ever write about our responsibility in the jury box.
Let's forget, for a moment, what today's over-zealous and omnipotent judges, prosecutors and lawyers tell us. Instead, let's take a look back at how our law was intended to be administrated and what the roll the citizen was intended to play.
In The Federalist Papers No. 62, James Madison admonishes: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?"
So, what is our recourse, then? How may a citizen help to correct the harm done by a stupid law? John Adams answered that back in 1771: "It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court."
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
John Jay, our nation's first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered in Georgia v. Brailsford: "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."
Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Declaration of Independence wrote in 1804: "The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."
Like all the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton agreed. In 1804, Hamilton wrote: "Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction . . . if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong."
Lysander Spooner, the Nineteenth-Century lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, legal theorist and all around political radical, in his 1852, "An Essay on the Trial by Jury," instructs:
"For more than six hundred years -- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their light, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law."
Few in today's criminal justice system take kindly to "citizens" having anything resembling an opinion on the law. Therefore, we wouldn't want to repeat any of these words to a judge or prosecutor. Nonetheless, how one votes in the jury room is not supposed to be scrutinized by the legal-eagles outside. Which means, use your best judgment, do what you wish, and then just be quiet about it.
For more on this subject, visit The Fully Informed Jury Association.(1) And, while you are there, rip off a copy of "the Jurors' Handbook: A Citizens Guide to Jury Duty."
1. <http://www.fija.org/>
<http://nowscape.com/fija/_hard.htm>
Tom Jefferson: The Jury is an anchor to hold government to the principles of its constitution.
John Jay: The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.
Sam Chase: The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.
Alex Hamilton: Juries should follow conscience, even against judges.
Lysander Spooner: The Jury has the final word.
How one votes in the jury room is not supposed to be scrutinized by the legal-eagles outside.
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