Citizen's Rule Book & Jury Nullification
Neiwert writes:
I happen to have had a great deal of experience with the "Citizens Rule Book," because it was one of the most popular items available for sale at militia meetings I attended. It also popped up in two trials I covered: the Montana Freemen, and the Washington State Militia. In both cases, Patriot agitators attending the trial attempted to have the guides distributed among the jurors of those trials and were slapped down.
"Nullification is, by definition, a violation of a juror's oath to apply the law as instructed by the court," according to a 1997 federal ruling, the strongest, most recent court decision on the topic. The opinion by Judge Jose Cabranes said jurors who reject the law should not be allowed to serve; when the ruling was appealed, the courts upheld, but also ordered a new trial after declaring that only "unambiguous evidence" of a juror's disregard of the law can justify his dismissal. ... In essence, jury nullification -- by sitting in judgment not just of the facts of the case but of the laws themselves -- arrogates to itself not only the role of the judge but of the legislature, essentially overturning at whim those laws that have been passed through democratic processes. In this sense, jury nullification is a threat not only to the courts, but to the very systems of laws on which the nation rests.
Because it does have a certain legal history, it has proven to be a powerful recruiting tool within the mainstream. It meshes nicely with the Patriot modus operandi of the 1990s: hiding the agenda by adopting a mainstream pose, offering crackpot theories as legitimate by spouting a blizzard of legalisms, and generally gnawing away at the legal system in the hopes of inducing its collapse. And they’ve been very successful at getting out the jury-nullification Gospel to a broad swath of society (particularly barter-fair types and libertarians), all under the guise of enacting a needed reform of the court system.
As Neiwert explains, a lot of people who are nowhere near extremist in their views have bought into "jury nullification." Although it has provided much-needed relief in bad cases, it has just as often perpetuated injustice. In a democratic system, bad laws are amended through a democratic process - jurors who refuse to apply the law are no different than a government official who refuses to apply the law - for example, Judge Roy Moore when he refused to remove the Ten Commandments monument when so ordered.
When a person, whether juror or judge or police officer, honestly feels that their conscience won't permit them the to exercise their official duties, that's fine - conscience and law sometimes conflict. But the solution is not to undermine the law internally (so long as the system is democratic, rather than totalitarian); rather, the solution is to leave the situation and work to change the laws democratically. Jury Nullification is no more a "check" or "balance" against government power than is the presence of government officials who ignore the law and become a law unto themselves.
Read More:
Comments
What a bunch of left-wing liberal commentary . . .
so lets just do away with the traditions that founded this very country? One need only have been unfairly accused of a crime and told by their lawyer that they do not have enough money to to provide an expert witness to disprove the accusation and subsequently told to take a “PLEA BARGAIN” in order to not waste the time of the court, to understand that the judicial system in America is corrupt and not at all concerned with the rights of its citizens.