J.A.I.L. News Journal
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Los Angeles,
California
March 3, 2023
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The Inherent Right of ALL People to Alter or
Reform Their Government.
The Right Upon Which All Other Rights Depend.
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History On Juries
Repeated
February 2006 Idaho Observer:
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20060202.htm
KAMIAH, Idaho-Carol Asher, a 66-year old retired
nun and school teacher faces the possibility of 14 years in prison for
exercising her right to free speech in the privacy and sanctity of the
jury deliberation room.
What did she say? As nearly as we have been able to learn, she may have
told the other jurors that ultimately, she answered to a Higher
Authority than the judge. Now she has been charged by Lawrence G.
Wasden, who is the Idaho Attorney General, by Stephen A. Bywater, who
is Deputy Attorney General, Chief, Criminal Division, and by Justin D.
Whatcott, who is Deputy Attorney General, all of whom work for the
people of the state of Idaho, with felony perjury for speaking her mind
within the confidentiality of the jury deliberation room.
[Note: Iliolo Jones, director of The American Jury Institute (AJI) and
the Fully informed Jury Association (FIJA), then made the point that,
our government is supposed to recognize that our rights come from God
and among them is the right to create government. Upon creating
government, we retain our rights and "the Bill of Rights is simply a
list of pre-existing rights by which we informed government that it was
not to even consider infringing"].
And we do have the right-we could not give it away if we wanted to,
because it is an intrinsic part of our identity as humans-to make
decisions based on our own conscience. Carol never gave up that right
while she was in the courtroom, serving as a juror, or at any other
time. No oath administered to any juror can deprive us of that
right.
Since when did free speech become a felony? If jurors are not to
deliberate, to freely discuss their impressions and ideas, if jurors
are not allowed by the state to hold open, honest consultation with
each other in a trusting and truthful fashion, then why do we have
juries?
If every juror who serves on a jury must guard his or her tongue in the
privacy of the jury deliberation room, fearful of making a statement
which will be reported to the prosecutor or the defense attorney or
judge by some jury snitch, then what happened to the privacy, the
sanctity, and the confidentiality of jury deliberations?
Have we reached the time in the history of our once great nation when
jurors must be provided with a list of phrases-perhaps even words-which
they cannot utter in the jury deliberation room, under pain of
prison?
Have we reached a time in our courts when jurors will be punished for
refusing to render a verdict according to the demands of the
government, when jurors will be punished if they refuse to ignore their
conscience and blindly accept the orders of the judge as the supreme
law of the land?
Have we reached a time when to hold the moral and religious
reservations held by the majority of the people in this country-those
reservations which allow us all to consult our own conscience, to rely
upon our own guiding principles and religious teachings-must be
ignored, set aside?
Must we, when we serve on a jury, no matter how reprehensible a verdict
of guilty might be to our conscience, vote guilty if that is the
verdict dictated by the tight confines of government instructions? And
will we then be singled out, from among the many voting not guilty, if
we have the courage and the moral strength to share our thoughts and
our reasoning with the other jurors?
Carol respectfully listened to the evidence of the case-it was another
of those apparently slam-dunk drug cases against a minority young male,
in this case, he was Indian, not Hispanic or black-and thoughtfully
considered what she had heard, as well as what she did not hear. She
was a thinking, attentive, and conscientious juror, and tried to do her
best to pay attention to all the facts and to render a just
verdict.
Carol was one of four jurors who voted "not guilty." Yet, because she
was open and honest in her remarks to the other jurors, not realizing
there might be some snitch in the room who would not respect the
confidentiality of jury room proceedings, she has been singled out to
be prosecuted for felony perjury. One must ask "why?"
Well, as it turns out, Carol also works with a civil liberties group
which criticizes a lot of the silly and abusive actions meted out by
government officials against private citizens. She has the courage to
ask questions. We think that may be why she has been singled out for
this harassment, tyrannical prosecution and general legal hazing.
Some other juror, perhaps unhappy that Carol honestly said what was on
her mind, went to rat her out to the prosecuting attorney. Well, sure,
the prosecutor wanted to win. Forget justice: These days, those
government employees go for blood, to polish their conviction rate
record. And now they are after Carol, singling her out to punish for
thwarting their prosecution, just because they think they can get away
with it.
The state employees named in the first paragraph certainly know they
will lose this one on appeal, but they can meanwhile cause Carol a lot
of stress and a lot of financial hardship. By their actions, if their
nasty little ploy works, they will scare other jurors in to a state of
meekness and obedience to the state and the government employees. No
more questions. No more thinking. A nice, neat rubber-stamping of the
charges brought against anyone. This is a prosecutor's dream come true.
Carol interfered with a slam-dunk for the state lawyers, and she is
being punished for being honest about her thinking. But, don't we want
jurors to think?
Why do we have juries in this country, anyway? We all understand that
juries protect society from dangerous individuals. But how many, today,
recall that juries are also empowered to protect individuals from
dangerous government prosecutions and unjust laws?
Jurors have a duty and responsibility to render a just verdict. They
must take into account the facts of the case, mitigating circumstances,
the merits of the law, and the fairness of its application in each
case. Our recognition of the authority and right of jurors to weigh the
merits of the law and to render a verdict based on conscience, dates
from before the writing of our Constitution, in cases such as those of
William Penn, while still in London, who was tried for breaking the
King's law against preaching the Quaker religion. His jury refused to
convict him although the judge ordered the jury to find him guilty.
When the jury refused, the judge had several jurors jailed until a
higher court ruled that jurors could not be punished for their verdict.
Penn later came to America and founded Pennsylvania.
No country has protected free expression more than has the United
States, and no case in American history stands as a greater landmark on
the road to protection for freedom of the press than the trial of
German immigrant printer John Peter Zenger. On August 5, 1735, twelve
New York jurors, inspired by the eloquence of the best lawyer of the
period, Andrew Hamilton, ignored the instructions of the governor's
hand-picked judges and returned a verdict of "Not Guilty" on the charge
of publishing "seditious libels."
The Zenger trial marked the beginning of a free press, and was an
eloquent declaration of the stubborn independence of American jurors.
Those jurors insisted that they would not be bullied by the
instructions of the judges, but would remain free-thinking, independent
citizens, exercising their minds as well as their consciences to render
a just verdict. That was their responsibility as jurors, and their
human right.
Should this right ever be suppressed, the people will retain the right
to resist, having an unalienable right to veto or nullify bad and
oppressive laws, and in fact, would be morally compelled to do so.
Jurors, as the representatives of the people, hold no personal agenda
during any trial and most certainly not the government's agenda. Let us
not forget that the prosecutors, judges, arresting officers-and the
forensic investigators in most cases-are all a part of and receive
their paychecks from government, with personal power bases to build and
personal careers to protect through the "productivity" of successful
prosecutions resulting in convictions. Jurors have no such stake in the
outcome, and are, in fact, the only truly objective individuals in the
courtroom.
Our current form of government was organized, hired and strictly
limited by our founding private citizens to protect our rights, not
arbitrate those rights. Juries were intended as the protectors against
government's power-hungry expansion and the resultant rise of tyranny.
The primary role of our jurors remains that of serving as an
independent body to protect private citizens from dangerous,
unconstitutional government laws and actions. Many existing laws erode
and deny the rights of the people. Jurors protect against tyranny by
refusing to convict harmless people.
Juries are the last peaceful defense of our civil liberties.
Our country's founders planned and expected that we, the people, would
exercise this power and authority to judge the law as well as the facts
every time we serve as jurors. What a person holds as justice in their
personal, private conscience and what decisions a person chooses in the
privacy of their own mind, are not susceptible to nor dependent upon
any external authority, direction or written law, but are the sole
province of the individual, reasoning mind.
The concept and right of sovereign juror authority is not a right
derived from any legal reasoning. It requires no citations to
legitimize it. It is a right that permeates the very concept of being
human. Human rights come before government: our government was formed
by free humans to protect human rights, not to grant them. While our
government may have been flawed, it yet rests on an excellent set of
controlling concepts from which it was formed. Human rights were what
our government was designed to protect. These rights, including the
right of the individual juror to make a decision based on rational and
responsible thought and individual conscience, transcend all
legislation and legal rulings and is above any modification or
apportionment by any lawyer or politician in our form of
government.
The concept and right of sovereign juror authority requires no
citations to legitimize it: It is a concept as solid and unalienable as
our right to life. While discussions of citations and rulings are of
interest, the core authority is not derived from the words of other
humans, but from our personal, individual inherent sense of our
self-ownership and our individual responsibility toward life and all
that implies.
All thinking Idahoans should rise to Carol's defense, in righteous
indignation, and in outrage over the arrogant, despotic actions of
state Attorney General Wasden, and his staff, all of whom are complicit
in an official conspiracy to deny human, civil, and jurist rights, in
defiant opposition to the clear dictates of our Constitution.
Her attorney is Wesley Hoyt at [email protected].
Carol's next court appearance is scheduled for March 7th.
Please get in touch with the people listed below and complain about
this treatment of a free and honest citizen.
Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General, (208) 334-2400
Stephen A. Bywater, Deputy Attorney General, (208) 334-4545
Justin D. Whatcott, Deputy Attorney, (208) 334-4545
Iloilo Marguerite Jones is the Executive Director of the Fully Informed
Jury Association and the American Jury Institute -
www.fija.org
The Idaho Observer
P.O. Box 457
Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869
Phone: 208-255-2307
Email: [email protected]
Web:
http://idaho-observer.com
http://proliberty.com/observer/