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Published 01 June 2001 (word count 757)
On May 7, 2001, the Golden State Supreme Court opined that a juror should not be allowed to have a conscience. According to the Contra Costa Times (where do I come up with these sources?) “California jurors must follow the law, and not their consciences, when deliberating” because the doctrine of jury nullification is “contrary to our ideal of equal justice for all.”
So how do you get equal justice for all when the law itself is unjust? Settle for unequal justice for all? Or maybe change the law? Lobby, protest, petition, campaign, litigate, initiate, referend. Vote the bums out and vote some new bums in. These are all recognized means of checking the checkered power of the power czars. Well, so is jury nullification.
Here’s how it works: Suppose a fellow citizen is facing twenty years in a government issue jumpsuit for dabbling in an illicit substance (such as several of our current government power czars have admitted to doing.) He hasn’t harmed a soul. As a jury member you think the law is, well, stupid. Technically, he broke the law but your now forbidden conscience compels you to vote for acquittal anyway. It means you’re judging the law as well as the facts. It means you’re exercising your time-honored right of jury nullification.
No, you haven’t nullified the law. The law is still there, chiseled deep into the big stone tablet in the hollowed halls of judicialness. It will be used again in other courtrooms in other trials against other peaceful, nonviolent fellow citizens. All you did was nullify that particular application of that particular law in that particular case. Nothing more.
Jury nullification is just one additional check against the checkered power of the power czars.
A little history, anyone? In Ye Merrye Olde Colonial Tymes, a publisher named Zenger zapped some zingers at Ye Royale Guvna of Neu Yawk. Worst of all, the zings were true. No matter. His Royalness hauled the scribbler into court for sedition. The jury did a Politically Incorrect Thing. Even though they knew Zenger had broken the law, they decided the law was, well, stupid. They refused to convict. Thus did twelve intrepid peers, using their perfectly legal (at the time) consciences, establish the principal that – write this down - all U.S. juries have the power and duty to nullify stupid laws with not-guilty verdicts.
Need an example more relevant to our racially sensitive times? Consider the period preceding that nasty ruckus known to Yankees as the Civil War and to Bubbas as the War of Northern Aggression. The fugitive slave laws were chiseled deep into the big stone tablet in the hollowed halls of judicialness. People helping slaves escape to freedom were therefore subject to prosecution. But thanks to a not yet outlawed detail known as a conscience, most weren’t convicted. Too many jury members thought these laws were, well, stupid. They looked at the law and they looked at the lawbreaker and then they performed a well established community service known as jury nullification. (If you’re against jury nullification, go ahead and argue in favor of fugitive slave laws.)
Some legal sticklers scowl that jury nullification means people taking the law into their own hands. So whose hands should the law be in? The legislators? The judges? The prosecutors? Why? It’s not their law. It’s our law. There’s no chicken or egg question here. We came first. Us. You and me and Sally and Bob and Uncle Guido. Citizens selected representatives to write a Constitution to unite a new country and create a strictly limited federal government. They were our representatives and our Constitution and our country and our government. We simply gave some of our fellow citizens permission to write some sensible laws so we could go about our business and otherwise be left alone.
So what if these fellow citizens start writing bad laws? What if they start telling us what to do instead of us telling them what to do? What if they start ignoring the nice little Constitution we wrote for them which clearly informs them of what they can and can not do? What if they start writing and enforcing laws that are just, well, stupid? Like a California ruling that says juries can’t vote their conscience?
We keep our consciences by ignoring the California ruling and take back our laws through jury nullification.
Without a conscience, what good is a juror anyway? Stuff the jury box with a Sun Workstation and a dozen blow-up dolls and be done with it.
- by Garry Reed
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