What if you had the right to challenge unfair laws as an everyday citizen? And what if this right had been intentionally hidden from you by the legal system? These questions aren’t of a purely hypothetical nature.
Jury nullification is one of your greatest rights as a citizen of the United States, and one that an overwhelming majority of Americans are completely in the dark about. The fact that a jury can not only weigh the facts of a case but also the justness or unjustness of a law – which can have a discernable impact on the implementation of jurisprudence – is a dangerous one. It’s hardly a shock, then, to learn about the legal stumbling block put in place by SCOTUS, the same vangaurd that at different times in our nation’s history has said that a corporation is legally recognized as a person but a black man is not:
In 1969, in “US. vs. Moylan,” the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of juries to judge the law in a case. In 1972, the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the same principal…Raymond Dillard said, “Yeah, if that’s the case, how come the judge didn’t tell us this?”
“That’s because of the despicable Supreme Court decision in ‘Sparf and Hansen vs. The United States in 1895.’” John Straun said. “That decision said juries have the right to judge the law, but that a judge doesn’t have to inform juries of this right. Cute, huh? And guess what happened after this decision? Judges stopped telling juries about their rights.”
Judges are manipulating the ignorance of juries to enact draconian punishments for things a human being should not be imprisoned for. But justice is blind, right?
