WHEREAS, September 5, 2007, will mark the 337th anniversary of the day when the jury, in the trial of William Penn, refused to convict him of violating England’s Conventicle Acts, despite clear evidence that he acted illegally by preaching a Quaker sermon to his congregation.
WHEREAS, by refusing to apply what they determined was an unjust law, the Penn jury not only served justice, but provided a basis for the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly.
WHEREAS, September 5th, 2007, also commemorates the day when four of Penn’s jurors began nine weeks of incarceration for finding him not guilty. Their later release and exoneration established forever the English and American legal doctrine that it is the right and responsibility of the trial jury to decide on matters of law and fact.
WHEREAS, the Sixth and Seventh Amendments are included in the Bill of Rights to preserve the right to trial by jury, which in turn conveys upon the jury the responsibility to defend, with its verdict, all other individual rights enumerated or implied by the U.S. Constitution, including its Amendments.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Sarah Palin, Governor of the State of Alaska, do hereby proclaim September 5, 2007, as:
Jury Rights Day
in Alaska, in recognition of the integral role the jury, as an institution, plays in our legal system.
Dated: August 31, 2007
This was of course just one of many gubernatorial proclamations for September 2007, including Winter Weather Awareness Week (you'd think they didn't need it in Alaska, but maybe it's for newbies), Alpaca Farm Day, Family Day--A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children, We Don’t Serve Teens Week, and Responsible Dog Ownership Day. At the same time, it's a fair inference that the governor endorses the spirit behind those days, both the broadly uncontroversial ones and ones that might be more controversial. As best I can tell, Jury Rights Day is largely a project of the Fully Informed Jury Association, which generally supports informing jurors of their power to engage in jury nullification.
Thanks to Peter Colter for the pointer.
For more on this topic see U.S. Trial Jury Reform .
Gov. Palin's office reports that she has agreed to renew the proclamation for 2008, but for obvious reasons has been a bit busy lately.
It is also reported that when she was first asked to sign the proclamation, she asked for more information on the subject, and was handed a package of FIJA materials. After reading them, she asked for more, including historical documents. It seems she is a history buff. After researching the subject and the controversy, she signed the proclamation.
(Wow. That looks small when I type it out. PA went for Ike, giving him 32 electoral votes. Now they're only equal to IN plus MN.)
Dave Hardy has more of a point than he may realize.
How Obama lost the election.
He writes up a storm, but from what I gather, his prophesying record is mixed at best. Still, it's an entertaining read.
It's over.
I'm calling shenanigans!
One can argue that some jurors nullified, but all the jurors obviously didn't, or he would have been acquitted in 1964. He died in prison, as he richly deserved.
Bryant and Milam were acquitted of the murder of Emmett Louis Till by an all white Mississippi jury in 1955. They publicly confessed in 1956. They were paid $4000 for the right to publish their confession.
Mose Wright, Emmett's great uncle was the first black man ever to testify against a white man in Mississippi and live.
Milam died of cancer in 1980. Bryant died of cancer in 1990.
In 2004 DOJ opened an investigation into the murder of Emmett Louis Till, based on evidence gathered by Keith A. Beauchamp (source for facts on these two scum above) of the participation of up to 14 others in the murder.
So two of the slimeballs escaped penalty for their hideous crime, but more participants may yet be prosecuted. I'm willing to bet that no jury will nullify if those prosecutions are brought.
Regardless of what happened in this particular example and regardless of what people TALK about jury nullification accomplishing it does present the danger that people will use it to apply their prejudices and local biases.
I mean to give a less contentious example I think almost all Americans agree on the importance of having anti-theft laws, even when the theft is committed against a large corporation. However, it's one thing to agree with this in the abstract it's another thing to apply this law when the guy who committed the theft is a value community member everyone knows was going through a rough time and was tight on cash while the corporation is distant and unsympathetic.
I don't mean to suggest that this in particular would be the sort of problem one might see with jury nullification but it illustrates the fact that it allows local communities to nullify federal and state laws that might otherwise apply to them. I vaguely seem to remember we fought a war to stop this kind of practice.
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To be clear I'm generally a fan of jury nullification, mostly because I think the drug laws are so bad. However, it's puzzling how jury nullification could work for drug laws but not create enough support to repeal the harsh penalties. Maybe it's something many people favor weakly and a few people oppose strongly?? Or maybe it would only work in druggie cities.
In any case the point is that there are serious drawbacks and concerns that jury nullification raises.
of course there are. just like there are drawbacks and concerns with having juries in the first place... see: OJ
the same could be said for gun rights.
but both do something very noble. They recognize a great responsibility and a great power are held by THE PEOPLE, not the elites in the legal system/criminal justice system (lawyers, judges).
I see the right of jury nullification much like the right to keep and bear arms. The VAST majority of people who keep and bear arms will never have to fire their gun at a person, and most will not even use it defensively (most defensive uses involve no discharge). But that right and power is there. Most juries will not nullify. Those cases are somewhat rare. But the power is there. WITH THE PEOPLE.
Palin is clearly a rugged individualist in every sense of that word.
There are dozens of similar cases, several of which I discussed in my 1997 Cornell Jrl. of Law &Pub. Pol'y article, Scapegoating the Jury. Many times, the prosecution was deliberately poor, the judge was biased, the investigators and witnesses lied, and the jury was blamed. An easy way to 1) make racism appear acceptable, and 2) make the government look fair (they tried the sumnabitch, didn't they?)
Very few lynching cases, or civil rights murder cases, were ever prosecuted. Hard to blame the juries for those injustices. Those that were prosecuted in federal courts (same citizens, different prosecutors, judges and investigators) almost uniformly ended in convictions.
I trust the integrity of a diverse jury far more than I do the integrity of jaded professionals, elected by and pandering to the majority. Is the jury perfect? Hell no. But before we condemn their exercise of discretion, remember that other actors also exercise discretion, without having to explain it to 11 of their neighbors. In the solitude of the prosecutor's office or the judge's chambers, it is far easier and far safer to act on racist impulses.
Young Opinion
Dave Hardy has more of a point than he may realize."
What you appear to overlook is that it was not the practice of jury nullification which was flawed in this instance, but rather the practice of jury selection: at that time, blacks in the south were largely excluded from jury service.
As this was a racist killing, it apparent even at first glance that the practice of exclusion against blacks was a significant factor in a case of racist killing of a black victim.
Jury selection process, not jury nullification, is the flawed practice in this instance.
Much more could be said about the flawed practices associated with voir dire, but I will leave that for another time.
Iloilo Marguerite Jones
IMJ