Your Jury Rights: The Fully Informed Jury

 

It has always bothered my that a jury, holding a persons freedom, or life, in their hands, are told what they can or can't see or hear as evidence in a case.  They are told what they can and cannot pay attention to or consider while forming their verdict.  It just didn't seem right.

 

It isn't.

 

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."  Thomas Jefferson

"It is not only his right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."  John Adams

 

 

Our constitution is under attack, by no less than the current administration, so the fact that the anchorage President Jefferson discussed in the first quote is questionable should come as no surprise to many Americans.  The second quote literally flies in the face of everything the courts would have us believe as jurors.  Read the quote again, slowly, and think about the power President Adams endows the juror with.

 

In 1972 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the jury has an...

 

"...Unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge.  The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law." (473F. 2d 1113)  

If we can't be allowed to find a verdict according to conscience and all of the evidence, then why do we have a jury at all?  Don't they just become the legitimate face for a corrupt, broken, socialist, judicial system? 

I can't answer my own questions, and that pisses me off to no end.  When I hear a judge prevent testimony, or other evidence from being viewed by the jurors, or when I hear a judge tell jurors to disregard a statement, I just get angry knowing some poor sap isn't getting justice.

I don't like being political on my blog, but I felt this was knowledge that needed to be passed around for your own discussion.  It weighs heavily on any discussion we would have on Christian morality and conscience, that separation of church and state.

  For further information, I point you to the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) website shown below.