KentForLiberty pages

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Jury: Our Last (peaceful) Hope


Do you know what a jury's true duty is? It is to judge the case according to the law, and to judge the law according to common sense (and each juror's conscience). That means if a law seems to you to be unfair, you have a right and a duty to refuse to convict, regardless of the judge's instructions to the contrary. This is known as "jury nullification". Up until a generation or so ago, judges would even remind the juries of this responsibility. In today's police-state mentality, that kind of independent thinking would spell the end of counterfeit "laws", or at least the end of jury trials. The drug warriors, vice squads, and gun-banners would watch helplessly as juries released innocents who had "violated" counterfeit "laws".

Knowing your responsibilities comes at a price, though. Jurors have been jailed in recent years for refusing to convict in direct defiance of a crooked judge's orders. For more information on jury nullification, I encourage you to check out The Fully Informed Jury Association. I think that jury nullification is the last chance for a peaceful end to the downhill slide we are on toward a full-blown police state.