JURIES: AMERICA'S HISTORIC BARRIER AGAINST OPPRESSIVE LAWS AND GOVERNMENT TYRANNY.

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The N.R.A. has launched a grass-roots campaign to help its members, their families, and friends become informed activists in the fight to keep and regain our God-given rights, including those protected by the second amendment. In the fight to regain our rights, most of our effort is, and has to be, in the political arena, however, in addition to political action, there is another area in which NRA members, their families, and friends can be effective in stopping the government dead in its tracks, whenever it attempts to infringe upon our rights,

It is the story of the trial of William Penn, who had committed no more serious offense than preach Quakerism in spite of an official "law," known as the Conventicle Act, intended to proscribe all religions except the Church of England. The jurors suffered up to nine weeks of torture to stand by the principle that every person has a right to worship according to his own conscience. Because they did not waver, they finally won.

"The Conventicle Act fell before these twelve inconsequential "bumble heads" - these twelve "simple-witted cockneys" without rank nor position in the government. There were no further prosecutions under that act. It was not necessary to importune vote-seeking legislators to pass repealing legislation. The entire government was humbled before them. They gained no material benefits for themselves, they blended back into their pre-trial anonymity. "By nullifying, the jury corrects governmental abuses and usurpations one at a time without violence, within the arena of the courtroom, preventing the formation of a long chain, which unchecked, could lead to revolution, as it did in 1776. The jury should be highly respected and honored." The right of juries to judge the justice of laws was eloquently discussed in 1852 by author Lysander Spooner in his

"To secure this right of the people to judge of their own liberties against the government, the jurors are taken from the body of the people, by lot, or by some process that precludes any previous knowledge, choice, or selection of them, on the part of the government. This is done to prevent the government's constituting a jury of its own partisans or friends. In other words, to prevent the government's packing a jury, with a view to maintain its own laws, and accomplish its own purpose."

"My position as a juror is to take the oath but, if the law is repugnant, to repudiate it in the jury room. Since to insist upon the oath is duress, and since it demands yielding inherent, Constitutionally guaranteed rights and powers, it is a lie from the beginning. It is not valid. It is the gun to your head and the offer you can't refuse. Jurors who have ostensibly sworn to the oath have remained on juries to prevent what would have been miscarriages of justice. The intense inquisition of jurors before trial is also to destroy jury independence by attempting to stack the jury with only compliant non- questioning jurors. The Constitution does not permit the court to invade the private lives of jurors with these outrageous inquisitions. That all of this is done in defiance of the Constitution is only partial demonstration of the extent we have progressed toward judicial oligarchy - despite those repeated Constitutional guarantees. The most valuable lesson we can learn from the ordeal of the Bushell jurors is that we do not require legislation nor other official act to save this grand bulwark of liberty, and liberty itself. We require only ourselves, knowledgeable and refusing to submit. And because our liberty depends principally upon the honesty of jurors, we the people, can overcome the oligarchy by doing nothing else than following, as jurors, the Bushell example of acting on conscience and principle."

Knowledgeable grass-roots political activity is absolutely necessary if we are to keep and regain our unalienable rights, protected by constitutional prohibitions on government. However, by serving on juries, when given the opportunity, with knowledge, acting on conscience and principle we can, once again, make the jury (at least the one we serve on) a "palladium of liberty."

In a Constitutional system of justice, such as ours, there is a judicial body with more power than Congress, the President, or even the Supreme Court. Yes, the trial jury protected under our Constitution has more power than all these government officials. This is because it has the final veto power over all "acts of the legislature" that may come to be called "laws". In fact, the power of jury nullification predates our Constitution. In November of 1734, a printer named John Peter Zenger was arrested for seditious libel against his Majesty's government. At that time, a law of the Colony of New York forbid any publication without prior government approval. Freedom of the press was not enjoyed by the early colonialists! Zenger, however, defied this censorship and published articles strongly critical of New York colonial rule. When brought to in August of 1735, Zenger admitted publishing the offending articles, but argued that the truth of the facts stated justified their publication. The judge instructed the jury that truth is not justification for libel. Rather, truth makes the libel more vicious, for public unrest is more likely to follow true, rather than false claims of bad governance. And since the defendant had admitted to the "fact" of publication, only a question of "law" remained.

It certainly does! At the time the Constitution was written, the definition of the term "jury" referred to a group of citizens empowered to judge both the law and the evidence in the case before it. Then, in the February term of 1794, the Supreme Court conducted a jury trial in the case of the State of Georgia vs. Brailsford (3 Dall 1). The instructions to the jury in the first jury trial before the Supreme Court of the United States illustrate the true power of the jury.

Or, as this same truth was stated in a earlier decision by the United States Court of appeals for the District of Maryland: "We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic of passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision." (US vs. Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (1969)).

YOU, as a juror armed with the knowledge of the purpose of a jury trial, and the knowledge of what your Rights, powers, and duties really are, can with your single vote of not guilty nullify or invalidate any law involved in that case. Because a jury's guilty decision must be unanimous, it takes only one vote to effectively nullify a bad "act of the legislature". Your one vote can "hang" a jury; and although it won't be an acquittal, at least the defendant will not be convicted of violating an unjust or unconstitutional law. The government cannot deprive anyone of "Liberty", without your consent! If you feel the statute involved in any criminal case being tried before you is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's God-given inalienable or Constitutional rights, you can affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime; for no man is bound to obey an unjust command. In other words, if the defendant has disobeyed some man-made criminal statute, and the statute is unjust, the defendant has in substance, committed no crime. Jurors, having ruled then on the justice of the law involved and finding it opposed in whole or in part to their own natural concept of what is basically right, are bound to hold for the acquittal of said defendant.

It is your responsibility to insist that your vote of not guilty be respected by all other members of the jury. For you are not there as a fool, merely to agree with the majority, but as a qualified judge in your right to see that justice is done. Regardless of the pressures or abuse that may be applied to you by any or all members of the jury with whom you may in good conscience disagree, you can await the reading of the verdict secure in the knowledge you have voted your conscience and convictions, not those of someone else. So you see, as a juror, you are one of a panel of twelve judges with the responsibility of protecting all innocent Americans from unjust laws.

"The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a necessary counter to case-hardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors, does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power". Look at that quote again. the court ruled jurors have the right to decide the law, but they don't have to be told about it. It may sound hypocritical, but the Dougherty decision conforms to an 1895 Supreme Court decision that held the same thing. In Sparf vs US (156 US 51), the court ruled that although juries have the right to ignore a judge's instructions on the law, they don't have to be made aware of the right to do so. Is this Supreme Court ruling as unfair as it appears on the surface? It may be, but the logic behind such a decision is plain enough.

From The 2ndAmendmentNews Team

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