Pubdate: Thu, 30 Mar 2006
Source: Daily Gate City (IA)
Copyright: 2006 Daily Gate City
Contact:  http://www.dailygate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1530
Author: Melody Boatner

MONTROSE RESIDENT SHARES THOUGHTS ON JURY SERVICE

The government cannot deprive anyone of "liberty" without your 
consent. If you feel the statute involved in any criminal case being 
tried before you is unfair, or that it infringes on the defendant's 
God-given inalienable or Constitutional rights, you can affirm that 
the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation 
of it is no crime; for no man is bound to obey an unjust command.

In other words, if the defendant has disobeyed some man-made criminal 
statute, and the statute is unjust, the defendant has in substance, 
committed no crime. Jurors, having ruled then on the justice of the 
law involved and finding it opposed in whole or in part to their own 
natural concept of what is basically right, are bound to hold for the 
acquittal of said defendant.

It is your responsibility to insist that your vote of not guilty be 
respected by all other members of the jury. For you are not there as 
a fool, merely to agree with the majority, but as a qualified judge 
in your right to see that justice is done.

Regardless of the pressures or abuse that may be applied to you by 
any or all members of the jury with whom you may in good conscience 
disagree, you can await the reading of the verdict secure in the 
knowledge you have voted your conscience and convictions, not those 
of someone else.

So you see, as a juror, you are one of a panel of 12 judges with the 
responsibility of protecting all innocent Americans from unjust laws. 
It was the jury, not the lawmakers, that changed alcohol prohibition.

Melody Boatner,

Montrose
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman