court trial against me - the outcome

mark485anderson at eml.cc mark485anderson at eml.cc
Thu Nov 29 20:10:43 UTC 2007


I agree. But here is what one judge in Colorado did to a juror who told
others about nullification:
http://www.levellers.org/jrp/orig/jrp.natllawj.htm

She was jailed for a period of time and after a lengthy defense,
eventually release.

The question maybe we should be asking is not "what are the rules" but
"how are we going to take back our Country and Freedom"? I, for one, do
not trust government employees, who are frequently the bottom of the
barrel, imnsho, to decide what is legal and what is not legal.


On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:22:46 -0600 (CST), "Scott Bennett"
<bennett at cs.niu.edu> said:
>      On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:46:03 -0800 "F. Fox" <kitsune.or at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >Andrew Del Vecchio wrote:
> >> Mark,
> >> 	In absentia was always there, it just wasn't SOP like it is now. BTW,
> >> are you familiar with jury nullification? It was a victim of the last
> >> round of substance prohibition in the 20s and 30s. Essentially, jurors
> >> have the (no longer honored) right to find a defendant 'not guilty' if
> >> they feel that the law he is accused of breaking is BS. See
> >> http://fija.org/ for more details.
> >> 
> >> ~Andrew
> >(much snippage)
> >
> >It's a shame they don't have that right any more.
> 
>      Where did you get that idea?  In all countries with juries modeled
>      upon
> or descended from the English common law juries, nullification is still
> an
> option available to juries.  Moreover, it is the *duty* of jurors to
> exercise
> it in appropriate situations.  The U.S. is a special case of such
> countries
> in that an acquittal is final and unreviewable by any court.  The "no
> double
> jeopardy" clause of Amendment VII to the Constitution for the United
> States
> of America was put there to prevent retrials of charges against persons
> for
> which those persons have been acquitted, an abuse that still goes on
> today
> in Canada and England.  Nevertheless, jury nullification is a legitimate
> duty of jurors in standing between the state and the individual, in which
> the state must get the permission of a cross-section of the populace to
> administer punishments, to prevent abuses, even in countries where the
> state
> can keep retrying its victims with jury after jury until it finds a jury
> that
> will convict.  The delays and expense involved can keep an innocent
> person
> alive at least that much longer and may eventually cause the state to
> give up
> its prosecution of the charge(s) against that individual.
>      Colonial juries often protected colonists against the Crown's
>      abuses,
> which lead to creation of courts of admiralty (known today as
> administrative
> law courts, now unconstitutional yet upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court),
> which
> did not use juries.  I gather that such courts resemble the court that
> Mirko
> faced in Germany.  I don't know enough about Germany's judicial system to
> know
> whether any trials there use juries of peers today, but it is noteworthy
> that
> the 1500-year-old English tradition of trial by peers was brought to
> England
> by the Saxons.  If it no longer survives in Germany, then that is tragic.
>      In any case, tor server operators in the U.K., the U.S. of A.,
>      Canada,
> and Australia need to be informed of their rights should they ever serve
> on
> juries.  Although a prosecutor might eliminate them from a jury trying a
> case
> against another tor server operator, it is entirely possible that the
> prosecutor might not think to ask the potential jurors whether they knew
> about
> tor.  It is also in the interests of tor server operators in these
> countries
> to help spread the information about jurors' rights throughout the
> general
> populations to increase the chances of getting at least one informed
> juror
> selected to serve as a juror in any particular trial of a tor server
> operator.
> >
> >Laws have a purpose IMO, but they should go only as far as is absolutely
> >necessary.
> >
>      Naturally, the peoples of the various countries have their own views
>      of
> the laws of their countries, and those views may agree or disagree with
> the
> views of prosecutors in those countries.  Where juries of peers are
> trying
> the cases, juries have the power and the duty to correct the prosecutors.
> In the U.S., juries successfully undermined the Fugitive Slave Act,
> alcohol
> prohibition, and other abuses by refusing to convict, thereby refusing to
> confirm the actions of the Congresses that had passed those Acts.  If
> this
> option is not available to the people of Germany, then they may wish to
> reconsider, and possibly revise, the current form of their judicial
> system.
>      After all, governments only legitimately exist to serve the People.
> When and where they are not serving the People, they are obviously
> illegitimate.
> 
> 
>                                   Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
> **********************************************************************
> * Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
> *--------------------------------------------------------------------*
> * "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
> * objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
> * -- a standing army."                                               *
> *    -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790         *
> **********************************************************************
-- 
  
  mark485anderson at eml.cc

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