Monday, June 05, 2017

A Fully Uninformed Jury

Jury finds man guilty of jury tampering after passing out juror rights pamphlets [More]
Slaves judged a runaway.

One thing FIJA has not been successful at is getting the message outside the niche and into the general public consciousness. That's due to many reasons, most having to do with the establishment suppressing information via both the educational system and through the media.

I've long thought one way to help break through that would be to pick a state that has ballot measures and create one instructing jurors have a right to be told their nullification powers as part of the instructions.

It probably wouldn't pass, but it would sure get more people aware of the concept, and woudln't have to be prohibitively expensive.

[Via Florida Guy]   

2 comments:

Mack said...

David,

I was hoping this was 'Fake News' or something, but of course it's not.

Actually, it's worse than I thought. See the remarks from the prosecutor when this began. I wonder if all this is worth discussing at OK?

* http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/12/pamphlet_handed_out_by_former.html

* http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/02/jurors-convict-man-for-telling-jurors-ab

* http://fija.org/document-library/case-info/keith-wood/

Henry said...

Butat least the ice has already been broken, so to speak.

"Maryland and Indiana, through their state Constitutions, do require that the jury be fully informed. Maryland's Constitution explicitly makes the jury "the Judges of Law, as well as of fact." (Maryland Const., Declaration of Rights, Art. 23.) Indiana's Constitution states that "the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts." (Indiana Const., Art. I, section 19.)”
http://davekopel.org/CJ/fija.htm

Ironic about Maryland, eh?