Mary Lou Seymour is a long-time libertarian activist and author. She lives in South Carolina. CLICK HERE FOR
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of the Week In last week's column, "Free Frank Cooper," I talked about how Richland County, SC had used the Probate Court "protective proceedings" statute to remove Frank Cooper from his property and commit him to a mental hospital, instead of using the county building permit ordinance to incarcerate him, and speculated that the county chose that venue since with a probate proceeding he had no right to a jury trial. Of course, we all know
that a jury trial today is a far cry from the jury trial
envisioned by our Founding Fathers. The jury was supposed
to be the "arm of the people," to ensure that
the government did not abuse its power to throw innocent
citizens in jail, or take their property. Our Founding
Fathers accepted the common law principle of jury discuss this
article on A thought provoking article, "What kind of Americans sit on our juries?" by John Silveira compares the experiment conducted at Yale in the 1960's which gauged the willingness of particpants to inflict pain in order to "please authority" with a modern jury room in which the jurors are asked the now routine question, if they are willing to bring a verdict of guilty, if the prosecutor proves his case, even if they, the jurors, disagree with the law. If the percentage in the Yale study held true, "fully 60 percent of the population would bring a verdict of guilty even if they felt the law was wrong -- or evil. Since it only takes one dissenting juror to hang a jury, the likelihood of a guilty verdict being administered for violation of a bad law should be negligible." However, most jurors simply DO NOT KNOW they have the "right" .... no, the duty ... to "vote their conscience." And that's where we come in. This Wednesday, June 4, 2003, Ed Rosenthal is scheduled to be sentenced for growing medical marijuana in California. As you may recall, back in February after Rosenthal was convicted, nine of the Rosenthal jurors publicly protested the verdict, going on Dateline, CNN, and other media stating they would never have convicted if they had known this was a medical case. In other words, if those jurors had known about "jury nullification," Rosenthal would not be facing a minimum of ten years in prison. And some of those same jurors who in February convicted Rosenthal are now "devoting about as much time and effort to the case now as they did during the trial. They're campaigning for a 'Truth in Trials' law which would change how juries in drug cases operate." ("The jury never rests") In my column, "War on drugs and the jury box" (02/11/03), I urged you to to combine the "prohibition doesn't work" meme and the "jury nullification" meme and do our part in fighting against the War on Drugs and for fully informed juries. There was a lot of media coverage in February, which died out when Bush's War of Aggression in Iraq took center stage. This is an excellent opportunity to once again spread the jury nullification meme. Americans for Safe Access is promoting June 4 as a National Day of Action for jury rights and medical marijuana. If you live near San Francisco or Washington DC, you can join in one of the rallies, or, you can join in leafletting outside of members' district offices members who haven't co-sponsored the Truth in Trials Act (which would end the federal government's gag on medical marijuana defendants in court.) And, of course, LTEs or call ins to radio shows highlighting the Rosenthal sentencing and why we need fully informed juries are an integral part of any outreach efforts. Americans for Safe Access and FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association) have numerous resources available for your outreach activities, from draft LTEs (and here)to bullet points for discussion to flyers and posters. For more info on jury nullification, see the ISIL "History of jury Nullification,", and Freedom Law's Jury Nullification page. But let's say we and other activists ARE successful in spreading the jury nullification meme and returning the role of our juries to the "protection from tyranny" envisioned in our Constitution. We'll be home free, right? Well, there's another giant problem with out court system. Corruption and judicial misconduct. And, as you'd expect in our current "injustice system," the foxes are guarding the henouse. Just over 20 years ago congress established through legislation a procedure to make misconduct allegations against Federal Judges. 28 U.S.C 372(c). Unfortunately,the evaluation of alleged judicial misconduct is done by the Judicial Council of the very same circuit as the judge who is the subject of the complaint works in. Joseph S. Norman II has mounted a campaign for independent review of Federal Judicial misconduct allegations. Sign the online petition at his site, Stop Bad Justice, which would require a grand jury or independent authority, which is not connected with the judicial branch of the government, to review judicial misconduct in a public forum and the results made a public record. For this week's action, let us do what we can to "save our justice system" by bringing the jury nullification meme into public consciousness again, and by working for independent review of Federal judicial misconduct. Oh, and back to Frank Cooper for a moment, because that is an example of the most horrible kind of the state using its power to bypass even the tattered remnants of the jutice system that still remain available to us. Please, if you didn't have a chance to take action last week, take a moment or two this week to write the jack booted thugs in Richland County SC. I have set up a blog to report on actions you and others take to bring this situation to light, so drop on by and see what others have done. (The exchange between "Sui Juris" and the Richland County Sheriff is particularly telling.) Til next week Mary Lou PS: This just in, too late to do a column this week, but check out this story about the Ferals trying to evict "in-holders," people who own land inside national parks. The Pilgrim family owns 400 acres inside a National Park, the Feds are trying to cut off the state road access ... the May-June issue of the Wrangell-St. Elias news gives a lot of info on the situation, including contact info for who to write. PPS: Last week I mentioned
a new activist resource I am working on with the folks at
Rational Review! Well, it's not QUITE ready for prime
time yet, but stay tuned, I'm keeping my fingers crossed
it'll be online next week! |
