Laurence Brown
W
ith the current epidemic of unfounded charges of domestic abuse being brought by revengeful women and the suspension of due process for men, the following lesson is an important one.True or False? When you sit on a jury you have the right to vote your conscience. This is true, but it is extremely unlikely that the judge will tell you this because the law presently doesn't require him or her to do so. Jurors are very rarely (never?) informed that they may vote according to conscience, or told that it's better to "hang" the jury than to violate one's conscience in order to reach consensus.
This principle goes back over 300 years to William Penn's trial in England. At that time England's highest court acknowledged the right of the jury to reject both law and fact and to find a verdict according to conscience.
John Adams, our second president, had this to say about the juror:
"It is not only his right but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
More recently the jury's power to reject bad law was again confirmed in 1972 when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the jury has an "unreviewable and irreversible power to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge. The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge."
Therefore, it is important to remember that the jury has more power than anyone else in the courtroom, and that in pursuit of a just verdict jurors are free to judge the merits of the law itself, its use in the case at hand, and the motives of the accused.
This information comes from the Fully Informed Jury Association, a nationwide network of jury-rights activists. They can be reached at:
Fully Informed Jury Association
PO Box 59, Helmville, MT 59843
1-800-TEL-JURY or 406-793-5550
Local supporting volunteers can be reached at 617-625-1100.