Most of you will be familiar with the concept of jury nullification. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are not. This is precisely why Mark Iannicelli set up a “Jury Info” booth outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver. In a nutshell, jury nullification is the idea that jurors can “can ignore the law and follow their conscience when they believe the law would dictate a miscarriage of justice.” In other words, jurors have the right to judge the law as well as the facts. As you will see in the video at the end, this concept has centuries of precedence in these United States behind it.
When you recognize the vast power that such a concept holds, you recognize why it would be so hated by statists and authoritarians across the land. That is precisely why Mr. Iannicelli was arrested and charged with handing out information.
For a little background, read the following from the Denver Post:
Denver prosecutors have charged a man with seven counts of jury tampering after they say he tried to influence jurors by passing out literature on jury nullification on Monday.
Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said “Juror Info” in front of the city’s Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse courthouse, prosecutors say.
The Denver District Attorney’s Office says Iannicelli provided jury nullification flyers to jury pool members.
Jury nullification is when jurors believe a defendant is guilty of the charges but reject the law and return a not guilty verdict.
In response to what appears to be a clear attack on freedom of speech, the Denver Post editorial board published an admirable defense of Mr. Iannicelli several weeks after his arrest. Here are a few excerpts:
It is astonishing that Denver police would arrest someone for handing out political literature outside a courthouse.
It’s even more astonishing that prosecutors would charge that person with seven felony counts of jury tampering.
Now, fortunately, civil rights attorney David Lane has filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of other jury nullification activists. They want an injunction to stop the city from violating their First Amendment rights should they too wish to pass out literature.
They deserve to get one.
Jury nullification is understandably controversial — and is especially resented by courts and prosecutors. It is the notion that jurors can ignore the law and follow their conscience when they believe the law would dictate a miscarriage of justice. But it is hardly a new concept.
In the 19th century, Northern juries refused to convict abolitionists for harboring runaway slaves. In the 20th century, juries often balked at enforcing Prohibition and later, on occasion, at what they considered overly harsh drug laws or laws governing sexual behavior.
Jury nullification had a darker strain, too, as Southern juries would sometimes refuse to convict white defendants guilty of racial violence.
The point is that jury nullification is not some crank theory concocted out of the blue.
As First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh has written, “It’s clear that it’s not a crime for jurors to refuse to convict even when the jury instructions seem to call for a guilty verdict.”
Those who believe the public needs to know about this possibility should have every right to publicize their views — even outside a courthouse.
Their jury nullification literature, as it happens, merely offered general statements, such as, “Juror nullification is your right to refuse to enforce bad laws and bad prosecutions.”
Four years ago, prosecutors in New York City charged a retired chemistry professor with jury tampering after he stood outside a federal courthouse handing out information on jury nullification. But Judge Kimba M. Wood of federal district court wouldn’t buy it. She ruled that prosecutors needed to show the protester meant to influence jurors in a specific case, and dismissed all charges.
Denver officials should be held to no less of a standard.
So where do things stand now?
The good news is that Denver’s city attorney has come to the aid of the activists, setting up a fight between him and the district attorney. Once again, from the Denver Post:
Denver’s city attorney has directed the police and sheriff’s department to stop arresting people passing out jury nullification literature in front of the courthouse.
The order was revealed Friday in U.S. District Court during a hearing involving a lawsuit against the city and Denver police chief Robert White.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month on behalf of activists who want to distribute jury nullification information outside the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse. They sued after two others who were handing out pamphlets were charged with seven counts of jury tampering by District Attorney Mitch Morrissey.
The lawsuit argues that the arrests are a violation of free speech rights and asks for a federal injunction against further arrests.
The lawsuit also named Denver Chief Judge Michael Martinez, who on Thursday issued an order barring demonstrations, protests, distributing literature, proselytizing and other activities on the courthouse grounds.
City Attorney Scott Martinez said his staff argued that the Denver judge’s order was overly broad. They also argued against arrests targeting people handing out jury nullification literature.
The city attorney’s office also has taken a position that their actions do not violate state law.
“We agree that the court house steps are a public forum and that people can pass out information, including pamphlets, in accordance with the First Amendment,” the city attorney said.
The city attorney’s position is unusual in that it is siding with the very people who are suing the city. It also pits the city attorney’s office against the district attorney’s office, which filed criminal charges.
Well done Mr. Martinez.
If you want a little more info on jury nullification, check out the following video featuring a much younger Ron Paul:
Part 2:
For related articles, see:
The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section
French Authorities Demonstrate Defense of Free Speech by Arresting 54 People for Free Speech
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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It would be great if everyone knew about jury nullification. But maybe a much smaller percentage is more realistic and functionally sufficient. If just avowed libertarians and the at least somewhat libertarian wings of the blue and red teams were acquainted with it I think you’d have 20-25% of the populace right there and that would be likely to get such a juror on most 12 person juries.
Kudos to Mr. Martinez and everlasting shame to dystopia stepping stones messieurs Morrisey and White.
The Scam of the Legal System
The “legal system” is nothing other than a huge scam, fraud, artifice, which is set up solely for the impoverishment and control of its victims. And of course, it also has the intent of using any means at all at its disposal for keeping itself going on forever, and growing, at an ever increasing rate.
But fear not, Dear Reader, as there is a most simple way out of that abyss, that labyrinth which we have been led into under the false idea that we can hire someone to help us in obtaining our justice when we are wronged. It is quite simply the serious and dedicated application of the Three Magic Questions. They are; What is the EXACT AMOUNT of fraud that ANYONE has the right to commit? What is the EXACT AMOUNT of fraud that ANYONE has an obligation to endure? What is the BASIC PREMISE that is being operated off of in the instant case? No lieyer who has ever been asked those first two questions has given a straight answer, the ONLY answer possible, which is none. For to do so would put an immediate end to the fraud which they depend upon for their daily bread!
It is a given that no one who is dependent upon something will ever do much, if anything at all, to harm it. Hence, we see quite clearly now as to why the lieyers of the world do not like to look too closely at the origins of their “profession” and what has become of it. What had started out as a bona fide alternative to the thoroughly corrupted King’s Court, has now become that very thing which it was created in protest against; a totally corrupted system! Many may balk at what this Author says, but NONE of them can offer up even the slightest shred of anything to actually prove it wrong.
If there was some amount of fraud that one had a right to commit or an obligation to endure, then how could it possibly be measured? Without that measuring stick or container or balance scale, how could anyone know for certain how much was not enough or how much was too much?
What is the BASIC PREMISE that is being operated off of at any given time? Don’t we have the Right to know that? Aren’t we at a severe disadvantage if we do not? Who can say that we have no inherent right to know all of what goes on around us? Are we “persons” held as slaves to another in a democracy, or are we free men and women in a republic? Please heed these words here well, for they ARE the key to the chains around your ankles!
If you print out the TMQs, either by hand or machine, and then post them all around your house and at work, after a short amount of time of thinking about them, they will become a part of your mind and way of thinking. Every time that you are interacting with others, you will think of it in terms of those TMQs!
Look up the definitions of fraud and contract, and learn them as well as you know your own name. Make them such a part of your thinking that not a day goes by without contemplating them, and you will then begin to see a change in your life. In the way that others treat you, and you treat others as well. It can’t help but happen, unless you wish to keep on being cheated and cheating others too.
The entire legal system is a den of thieves and vipers. Why should we continue to feed them anymore, when they bring us such unlimited amounts of misery? We need to use the TMQs and starve them all out of business as well as existence!! What would a so-called “judge” be able to say or do if asked those three simple questions? What could they say? What can ANYBODY say in response to them? It should be dawning upon you Dear Reader, just about now, that you are at the mercy of a corrupted system that has gone wild and is completely out of control. Who is going to rein it all back in? Can it ever be done? This Author says no, it cannot! It is like a hand or arm with gangrene in it. It cannot be saved, so it must be cut off as quickly as possible, before the body dies and there is nothing left to save.
Make your OWN test of the TMQs as this Author has done. Ask as many lieyers as you can stomach, what the answers to those questions are. You won’t get one in a thousand to answer you honestly, for it would go straight against what they are all about! Just look up “Attorney and Client” in the Corpus Juris Secundum, Section 14 and see it for yourself!
A thorough and careful study of any law dictionary will give you more knowledge of and insight into the criminal nature of the legal system than you could ever imagine. It is just FILLED with expose’ after expose’ of how corrupt the system is, if you are only daring enough to see it for what it is.
Very few people will go into a fight that they completely KNOW they have no chance of winning. They would rather just let the fight come to them, and be killed, than to expend their last energy in that way. The lieyers of the world are the same way. They know that they cannot prevail against the TMQs, so they do all that they can to avoid them like the plague. To answer them correctly, is to commit suicide, both financially as well as “professionally”. Being as professional as an unwashed whore that is. What could a lieyer do for honest work then? Surely not much until retrained, as their whole career was all about lying, cheating and stealing. If anyone at all can prove this Author to be wrong to any degree, in any way, then let them do so at once! This is all born out of some facts as solid as a piece of granite stone, coupled with a bit of logic. True, some may like to ridicule these facts, thoughts and logic, but can they prove them to be wrong? Or have all of the differences between what is right and what is wrong been eliminated? If such is the case, then surely it must have been done by the lieyers themselves, for no one else would profit so handsomely from such a dastardly deed as they would. But to be fair, whores at least serve a useful, if maybe distasteful purpose in society. Lieyers on the other hand, do not. Maggots, jackals and vultures may feed off of dead bodies, but lieyers are the main cause of all those dead bodies.
These elevated to the bench so-called “judges” (actually they’re just Executive Administrators sitting in Admiralty jurisdiction) are just more lieyers, and are far from being unbiased. Since they do not swear a proper oath of office, and also are members of the British Accredidation Registry who take bribes (cash payments in “income tax” cases and monies from civil judgments paid into their retirement funds), how can they be anything BUT biased??
Justice must satisfy the appearance of justice. The USSC has ruled and reaffirmed so in Levine v. United States, 362 U.S. 610, 80 S. Ct 1038 (1960), citing Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11,14, 75 S. Ct. 11,13 (1954). “A Judge receiving a bribe from an interested party over which he is presiding, does not give the appearance of justice”. How much plainer than that does it need to be?? For further proof of all this, just do a search for “Fraud upon the Court” or “Fraud on the Court” and see what you find. “It is axiomatic that fraud vitiates everything”. Those words are not those of this Author only, they come from many, many court cases. ANY officers committing fraud upon the court render the orders and judgments of that court void, of no legal force or effect. This is the reason why everyone needs to get the “judge” on record at the outset, BEFORE any kind of plea is entered into the record, a promise to not commit any kind of fraud to any degree in the proceedings nor to allow anyone else to commit any fraud either. What kind of “judge” would not gladly make such a promise? Would any honest judge have a valid reason for not doing so? Is there some kind of hidden premise that is being operated off of in the courtroom? As stated earlier, NO ONE who is benefiting from a fraud or scam can be counted upon to injure it. The legal system has become a plague upon the land, and like a plague, it will kill itself off after it destroys more hosts than are needed to keep itself going.
No casino anywhere in the world forces people in off the street at gun point and makes them gamble with their life or property, so why should a court be able to do it? What is the basic premise of the courts? It’s certainly not to ensure that justice is done! The outcome of any so-called “trial” is no more guaranteed than whether black or red will come up on the spin of a wheel. In the subject of casinos, most everybody is aware to some degree that the games are all rigged up in favor of the house, but how many of us know that the courts are rigged up every bit as much, if not even WORSE?
In the case of U.S. v. Robert C. Braun, Mr. Braun merely asked if the property he and his fellows had been protesting upon had ever been ceded to or bought by the federal government. It had not, so the silent judicial notice of federal legislation being in full force and effect there was negated. Braun, and his already convicted fellow protesters (all of whom had hired attorneys BTW) against abortion had not in fact violated the F.A.C.E. Act and were thus set free. Foley Bros. v. Filardo had been upheld, much to the chagrin of the prostituting attorney, who told the “judge” that if the legislative jurisdictional challenge from Braun was permitted to stand, “half the prison doors in America would fly open”. EXCUSE ME?!?! That filthy scum bag lieyer KNEW that fraud was being committed all along, and yet did nothing to stop it? Why wasn’t he put into jail for aiding and abetting a crime? Or is it his JOB to commit fraud upon everyone that he can get away with? It most certainly does seem so!
So woe unto YOU, lieyers of the world! The people are beginning to wake up to your foul works and evil deeds, and soon we will be rid of you, one way or another!
The Holes in the Legal System
Not very many people realize just how full of holes the legal system actually is. It’s the opinion of this Author that it is due to the heavy level of indoctrination that goes on in the public fool system. Virtually NO ONE is taught what critical thinking is, let alone how to apply any of it. We’ve been reduced to a nation of people who are cowed into toeing the political party line, regardless of expense, which is nothing but political correctness gone wild. And so with all of this indoctrination rather than education going on, is it really any wonder now as to why we are virtually in a state of free-fall in so many areas of our life? No church, no police force, no government nor its agents, no banking system, no political affiliation, no school, not ANYTHING can claim to have fully clean hands. All of the above have been caught with the net of the Three Magic Questions. None of them can escape that net no matter how much wriggling or squirming they may do. And they do wriggle and squirm when caught. What is the EXACT AMOUNT of fraud that ANYBODY has the right to commit? What is the EXACT AMOUNT of fraud that ANYBODY has an actual obligation to endure? What is the BASIC PREMISE that is being operated off of in the instant case? Those three simple little questions totally destroy the pretenses of the legal system. They lay bare the fact that it is a criminal enterprise formed up by and run by criminals for their own profits and nothing more than that.
Imagine if you will, that the legal system is like a large piece of Swiss cheese, laid out on the floor. Now we’ve all been totally convinced over the years that we all must step only on the solid parts of the cheese, and to never go near the holes. But what happens when we step into one of those holes? We drop right straight through them and escape from it! But most people think that it’s not fair to the rest of the suckers who do only what they are told to do and never step into a hole. But there’s an undercut in operation here. It is that since the entire legal system is a scam from the very beginning, we have no obligation at all to NOT step into a hole and disappear down it. Some may say something like “Well if everybody did that, well we’d have no courts anymore, we’d have anarchy in the streets, we’d have rioting and looting, etc, etc, etc”. Well don’t we already have those things in wholesale amounts now anyway? Just look around you now and see what you can see for a minute or two.
You will see that there’s no justice in the courts save what happens there purely by accident, no protection by the police except for them saving and protecting themselves from the wrath of the people that have been wronged by them, the schools are barely able to teach their charges how to read and write well enough to fill in a welfare program form, the churches abuse our children and assist the governmental and non-governmental agencies in stealing from their parishioners, the politicians do not listen to the people save for the ones who put them into office, need the list go on any longer now? So where is the “down side” to moving over a bit and stepping into a hole in the legal system? ONLY the ones who make a profit off of the legal system object to someone stepping into one of its holes.
Those holes are all over the place, and some of them are quite large indeed. All it takes to find them is to open up your eyes and LOOK for them! Look with the knowledge that they are there and that you do not have any kind of an obligation to not use them. Those holes are made visible by reading The Maxims of Law, reading a law dictionary, THINKING for a moment about the TMQs. The Maxims of Law are the spirit of what the laws are supposed to be for and say. The law dictionaries show us where the holes are and how big they are. Thinking about the legal system will show us where the nearest hole is for us to step into and fall out of it. The TMQs give us the reasons as to WHY we should be stepping into those holes and doing so without the slightest amount of regret, except for the regret that we didn’t do it sooner!
In short, just how much worse off will we really be by stepping into some of those holes? The ones who own and operate the legal system scam for profit will suffer for sure, but no one else!! Everyone else will profit from stepping into those holes. It won’t be the case that there will be more lawlessness, as we already have more than we can stand anyway. So what’s the harm??
Your ever humble logician servant,
Randy
Yet another well documented case proving that America should more appropriately be named Naziville – a distopian country of injustice and hypocrisy where double standards for the privillaged few are the order of the day. 7 Felony charges for fucking with the club, members only please!!!
Thanks Mike for the effort you put in for us, much appreciated.
Do you have the date this video was made? I was wondering if the Heritage Foundation scholar would still hold the same opinion about our gutted Republic under the increasingly blatant corruption in Washington.
For example, our “lawmakers” knew day one that Hillary’s email server violated many laws they supposedly wrote and passed designed to protect sensitive information flows.
I’m not sure, but judging by the look of Ron Paul, I’d say it’s sometime in the 1980s.
Mike, another home run! Thanks for it.
The nullification concept goes well beyond juries and may be applied to any acts of usurpation by government — any non delegated authority.
I have been saying this for years and covered it in the last issue of my “Saint Aug Dog” newspaper. You can read what The Constitution Society has to say about it in the issue…
http://saintaugdog.com/sadissues/issue1/1page7sad.html
Read the entire issue and its introduction if you have time, its an indictment of the entire system in real speak. You can even cast a jury vote. The introduction is here…
http://saintaugdog.com/sadarticles/murderissue.html
Patriots, vote “NOT GUILTY” no matter how long a leftist traitor judge or prosecutor keeps sending the jury back until that traitor gets the GUILTY verdict he demands. Stand up to traitors. When a patriot is being screwed stick with “NOT GUILTY” until hell freezes over and the patriot is released.