History On Juries Repeated
History On Juries Repeated
>February 2006 Idaho Observer:
>http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20060202.htm
>
>KAMIAH, Idaho-Carol Asher, a 66-year old retired nun and school teacher
>faces the possibility of 14 years in prison for exercising her right to
>free speech in the privacy and sanctity of the jury deliberation room.
>
>What did she say? As nearly as we have been able to learn, she may have
>told the other jurors that ultimately, she answered to a Higher Authority
>than the judge. Now she has been charged by Lawrence G. Wasden, who is the
>Idaho Attorney General, by Stephen A. Bywater, who is Deputy Attorney
>General, Chief, Criminal Division, and by Justin D. Whatcott, who is Deputy
>Attorney General, all of whom work for the people of the state of Idaho,
>with felony perjury for speaking her mind within the confidentiality of the
>jury deliberation room.
>
>[Note: Iliolo Jones, director of The American Jury Institute (AJI) and the
>Fully informed Jury Association (FIJA), then made the point that, our
>government is supposed to recognize that our rights come from God and among
>them is the right to create government. Upon creating government, we retain
>our rights and “the Bill of Rights is simply a list of pre-existing rights
>by which we informed government that it was not to even consider
>infringing”].
>
>And we do have the right-we could not give it away if we wanted to, because
>it is an intrinsic part of our identity as humans-to make decisions based
>on our own conscience. Carol never gave up that right while she was in the
>courtroom, serving as a juror, or at any other time. No oath administered
>to any juror can deprive us of that right.
>
>Since when did free speech become a felony? If jurors are not to
>deliberate, to freely discuss their impressions and ideas, if jurors are
>not allowed by the state to hold open, honest consultation with each other
>in a trusting and truthful fashion, then why do we have juries?
>
>If every juror who serves on a jury must guard his or her tongue in the
>privacy of the jury deliberation room, fearful of making a statement which
>will be reported to the prosecutor or the defense attorney or judge by some
>jury snitch, then what happened to the privacy, the sanctity, and the
>confidentiality of jury deliberations?
>
>Have we reached the time in the history of our once great nation when
>jurors must be provided with a list of phrases-perhaps even words-which
>they cannot utter in the jury deliberation room, under pain of prison?
>
>Have we reached a time in our courts when jurors will be punished for
>refusing to render a verdict according to the demands of the government,
>when jurors will be punished if they refuse to ignore their conscience and
>blindly accept the orders of the judge as the supreme law of the land?
>
>Have we reached a time when to hold the moral and religious reservations
>held by the majority of the people in this country-those reservations which
>allow us all to consult our own conscience, to rely upon our own guiding
>principles and religious teachings-must be ignored, set aside?
>
>Must we, when we serve on a jury, no matter how reprehensible a verdict of
>guilty might be to our conscience, vote guilty if that is the verdict
>dictated by the tight confines of government instructions? And will we then
>be singled out, from among the many voting not guilty, if we have the
>courage and the moral strength to share our thoughts and our reasoning with
>the other jurors?
>
>Carol respectfully listened to the evidence of the case-it was another of
>those apparently slam-dunk drug cases against a minority young male, in
>this case, he was Indian, not Hispanic or black-and thoughtfully considered
>what she had heard, as well as what she did not hear. She was a thinking,
>attentive, and conscientious juror, and tried to do her best to pay
>attention to all the facts and to render a just verdict.
>
>Carol was one of four jurors who voted “not guilty.” Yet, because she was
>open and honest in her remarks to the other jurors, not realizing there
>might be some snitch in the room who would not respect the confidentiality
>of jury room proceedings, she has been singled out to be prosecuted for
>felony perjury. One must ask “why?”
>
>Well, as it turns out, Carol also works with a civil liberties group which
>criticizes a lot of the silly and abusive actions meted out by government
>officials against private citizens. She has the courage to ask questions.
>We think that may be why she has been singled out for this harassment,
>tyrannical prosecution and general legal hazing.
>
>Some other juror, perhaps unhappy that Carol honestly said what was on her
>mind, went to rat her out to the prosecuting attorney. Well, sure, the
>prosecutor wanted to win. Forget justice: These days, those government
>employees go for blood, to polish their conviction rate record. And now
>they are after Carol, singling her out to punish for thwarting their
>prosecution, just because they think they can get away with it.
>
>The state employees named in the first paragraph certainly know they will
>lose this one on appeal, but they can meanwhile cause Carol a lot of stress
>and a lot of financial hardship. By their actions, if their nasty little
>ploy works, they will scare other jurors in to a state of meekness and
>obedience to the state and the government employees. No more questions. No
>more thinking. A nice, neat rubber-stamping of the charges brought against
>anyone. This is a prosecutor’s dream come true. Carol interfered with a
>slam-dunk for the state lawyers, and she is being punished for being honest
>about her thinking. But, don’t we want jurors to think?
>
>Why do we have juries in this country, anyway? We all understand that
>juries protect society from dangerous individuals. But how many, today,
>recall that juries are also empowered to protect individuals from dangerous
>government prosecutions and unjust laws?
>
>Jurors have a duty and responsibility to render a just verdict. They must
>take into account the facts of the case, mitigating circumstances, the
>merits of the law, and the fairness of its application in each case. Our
>recognition of the authority and right of jurors to weigh the merits of the
>law and to render a verdict based on conscience, dates from before the
>writing of our Constitution, in cases such as those of William Penn, while
>still in London, who was tried for breaking the King’s law against
>preaching the Quaker religion. His jury refused to convict him although the
>judge ordered the jury to find him guilty. When the jury refused, the judge
>had several jurors jailed until a higher court ruled that jurors could not
>be punished for their verdict. Penn later came to America and founded
>Pennsylvania.
>
>No country has protected free expression more than has the United States,
>and no case in American history stands as a greater landmark on the road to
>protection for freedom of the press than the trial of German immigrant
>printer John Peter Zenger. On August 5, 1735, twelve New York jurors,
>inspired by the eloquence of the best lawyer of the period, Andrew
>Hamilton, ignored the instructions of the governor’s hand-picked judges and
>returned a verdict of “Not Guilty” on the charge of publishing “seditious
>libels.”
>
>The Zenger trial marked the beginning of a free press, and was an eloquent
>declaration of the stubborn independence of American jurors. Those jurors
>insisted that they would not be bullied by the instructions of the judges,
>but would remain free-thinking, independent citizens, exercising their
>minds as well as their consciences to render a just verdict. That was their
>responsibility as jurors, and their human right.
>
>Should this right ever be suppressed, the people will retain the right to
>resist, having an unalienable right to veto or nullify bad and oppressive
>laws, and in fact, would be morally compelled to do so.
>
>Jurors, as the representatives of the people, hold no personal agenda
>during any trial and most certainly not the government’s agenda. Let us not
>forget that the prosecutors, judges, arresting officers-and the forensic
>investigators in most cases-are all a part of and receive their paychecks
>from government, with personal power bases to build and personal careers to
>protect through the “productivity” of successful prosecutions resulting in
>convictions. Jurors have no such stake in the outcome, and are, in fact,
>the only truly objective individuals in the courtroom.
>
>Our current form of government was organized, hired and strictly limited by
>our founding private citizens to protect our rights, not arbitrate those
>rights. Juries were intended as the protectors against government’s
>power-hungry expansion and the resultant rise of tyranny. The primary role
>of our jurors remains that of serving as an independent body to protect
>private citizens from dangerous, unconstitutional government laws and
>actions. Many existing laws erode and deny the rights of the people. Jurors
>protect against tyranny by refusing to convict harmless people.
>
>Juries are the last peaceful defense of our civil liberties.
>
>Our country’s founders planned and expected that we, the people, would
>exercise this power and authority to judge the law as well as the facts
>every time we serve as jurors. What a person holds as justice in their
>personal, private conscience and what decisions a person chooses in the
>privacy of their own mind, are not susceptible to nor dependent upon any
>external authority, direction or written law, but are the sole province of
>the individual, reasoning mind.
>
>The concept and right of sovereign juror authority is not a right derived
>from any legal reasoning. It requires no citations to legitimize it. It is
>a right that permeates the very concept of being human. Human rights come
>before government: our government was formed by free humans to protect
>human rights, not to grant them. While our government may have been flawed,
>it yet rests on an excellent set of controlling concepts from which it was
>formed. Human rights were what our government was designed to protect.
>These rights, including the right of the individual juror to make a
>decision based on rational and responsible thought and individual
>conscience, transcend all legislation and legal rulings and is above any
>modification or apportionment by any lawyer or politician in our form of
>government.
>
>The concept and right of sovereign juror authority requires no citations to
>legitimize it: It is a concept as solid and unalienable as our right to
>life. While discussions of citations and rulings are of interest, the core
>authority is not derived from the words of other humans, but from our
>personal, individual inherent sense of our self-ownership and our
>individual responsibility toward life and all that implies.
>
>All thinking Idahoans should rise to Carol’s defense, in righteous
>indignation, and in outrage over the arrogant, despotic actions of state
>Attorney General Wasden, and his staff, all of whom are complicit in an
>official conspiracy to deny human, civil, and jurist rights, in defiant
>opposition to the clear dictates of our Constitution.
>
>Her attorney is Wesley Hoyt at hoytlaw@hotmail.com.
>Carol’s next court appearance is scheduled for March 7th.
>Please get in touch with the people listed below and complain about this
>treatment of a free and honest citizen.
>Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General, (208) 334-2400
>Stephen A. Bywater, Deputy Attorney General, (208) 334-4545
>Justin D. Whatcott, Deputy Attorney, (208) 334-4545
>
>Iloilo Marguerite Jones is the Executive Director of the Fully Informed
>Jury Association and the American Jury Institute - www.fija.org
>
>The Idaho Observer
>P.O. Box 457
>Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869
>Phone: 208-255-2307
>Email: observer@coldreams.com
>Web:
>http://idaho-observer.com
>http://proliberty.com/observer/