J.A.I.L.'s Purpose: To Threaten
Judges With Blackmail (Gazette-Times)
Gazette-Times
Corvallis,
Oregon
November 15,
2005
Keep judiciary strong and independent
Almost every day, a letter to the editor arrives regarding Amy
Stack�s pending sentencing hearing. But unlike most letters, these are not
addressed to the readers or editors of the newspaper; they are addressed to
Judge Locke Williams of the Benton County Circuit Court. The heartfelt message
is expressed in varied ways, but it is essentially the same:
Stack, 28,
was not adequately held legally accountable in connection with her role in the
2004 hit-and-run death of bicyclist Robin Jensen, 18. The letters speak of the
devastating loss of Jensen. Most take Williams to task for not admitting at
trial some of the prosecution�s evidence that could have alerted jurors to the
possible involvement of alcohol. The letters conclude by urging the judge to
impose the maximum sentence possible during Stack�s sentencing hearing,
scheduled for Thursday.
One letter writer candidly said the letters were part
of an organized effort to sway the judge�s decision. �Our goal is a letter a day
until the sentencing,� the writer said.
Not all of the letters were published, only those
that addressed readers and raised relevant issues. Besides, we doubt that judges
formulate legal decisions based on how many letters are published on the
editorial page.
The judiciary is supposed to be an impartial filter of
laws and precedents. But the idea that justice is too often hijacked by the law
is feeding a growing dissatisfaction with judicial authority. It is rooted in
the belief that this authority is too absolute.
In fact, that isn�t so.
Judges are challenged all the time. They are removed from the bench for judicial
misconduct; their decisions are overturned on appeal; they are voted out of
office. Yet this growing discontent, as evidence by the often-heard grumbling
about �activist judges,� is fueling an effort in South Dakota to put a measure
on the ballot that would strip judges of their immunity from
prosecution.
The goal of this measure is to reverse a century of
prosecutorial immunity for judges, presumably to afford citizens � what? � the
right to threaten judges with blackmail if they don�t rule the way a litigant
wanted, rather than what the evidence and the law requires?
That�s
certainly a fast road to chaos, and we trust the voters in South Dakota to see
the folly in yanking that thread from the fabric of our constitutional
democracy.
The legal system has not yet finished with the matter of the
hit-and-run death of Robin Jensen. Aside from whatever sentence is imposed
Thursday, we foresee a change in state laws that modifies the penalties for
leaving the scene of an accident without checking for injury when serious injury
or death had resulted.
Our interest as citizens should be to strengthen
and make more equitable the laws that protect us all, not to undermine the
process by which those laws are administered.
The Oregon Gazette-Times has lost all perspective of American History
in setting forth that J.A.I.L. in South Dakota will blackmail judges, so it
is time they receive a refresher course on history. Our Founding Fathers
founded this country on the very same principles the Gazette-Times now
blasphemes. We call to witness the voices of those down through
American History.
It was Thomas Jefferson, the famed author of our current and respected
Declaration of Independence unanimously adopted by Congress July 4, 1776,
who said, "The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the
hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they
please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that
whatever power in any government is independent, is
absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up,
but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere
but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral
law." ~ Thomas Jefferson
Notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson, the Gazette-Times believes that the
People cannot be trusted, and that they must surrender their power
to the judiciary, i.e., "Keep judiciary strong and independent." This
is the very thing our Founding Fathers feared, and sought to avoid.
It was Patrick Henry, the man who affirmed, "I know not what
course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." who
said at our Constitutional Convention, "Power is the great evil with which
we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government,
and created checks and balances to prevent abuse of power by each branch. But
where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power
of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial
tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson affirmed the fears of Patrick Henry, "The original error
[was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the
nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they
were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceeding to its own
will."
Further, he said, "The germ of destruction of
our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working
like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little
tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of
jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the
other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we
separated." "At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary
bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the
government. Experience, however, soon showed us in what way they were to become
the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their
removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their
decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded
by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by
precedent, sapping little and little, the foundations of the Constitution,
before anyone perceived that invisible and helpless worm had been busily
employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for
life, if secured against all liability to account."
What he contended was that if America
would be destroyed, it will be through a strong and independent
judiciary. In other words, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would
strongly condemn the words of the Oregon Gazette-Times.
Senator Sam Ervin stated,
"... judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a
worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government of laws with a
judicial oligarchy."
U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones on
February 28, 2023 stated, "The American legal system has been corrupted almost
beyond recognition."
In our May 28, 2004 J.A.I.L. News Journal entitled "Why Democracies Fail" we set forth, "The internal collapse of all nations require the concurrence of a nation's judiciary, and without such concurrence, there can be no police state established. Through the passage of more and more laws, with its attendant finger-pointing of blame, People begin to discover hypocrisy, and thus they will learn from government to disrespect law and authority until there is a complete collapse into anarchy and bondage."
More recently, on November 14, 2022 we published a J.A.I.L. News
Journal entitled, "Beware of The Phrase: Independence of the Judiciary" Therein we completely destroyed the common notion of "Judicial Independence," showing it means exactly the opposite of what those opposing J.A.I.L. attempt to teach. "Independence" as applied to the three branches of government, is always a sword, never a shield. It is for the exercise of power against the other two branches of government. Otherwise, pray tell, how could there exist an independent system of checks and balances of the three branches of government if judicial independence meant what the Gazette-Times attempts to interpret it to mean? It couldn't!
- Ron Branson