Friday, December 02, 2011

Advising jurors about their legal rights is “not protected by 1st Amendment”?

We read:
"Advocating for a controversial legal tactic known as jury nullification can get U.S. citizens prosecuted for jury tampering, according to one Manhattan prosecutor who’s pursuing that very charge against a 79-year-old former chemistry professor.

Indicted last year, all Julian P. Heicklen says he was doing is handing out pamphlets from the Fully Informed Jury Association near a courthouse. ...

Manhattan prosecutor Rebecca Mermelstein argued in a recent court filing examined by the paper that because he hoped to 'target prospective jurors,' he was 'tampering with the legal process.'"

Source

Most jurors don't know that if they don't like the law under which someone is prosecuted they are perfectly entitled to find the person not guilty regardless of the evidence. It's a right that goes back hundreds of years.

When there are so many laws that everybody is guilty of something, it's an important safeguard against unfair prosecution -- so the legal system does its best to prevent knowledge of that right getting out. But Heicklen hands out pamphlets outside courthouses that tell people of that right.

He is a dedicated enemy of big government who puts his money where his mouth is: A genuine American hero. He is clearly protected by both provisions of the first amendment: Free speech and freedom of the press.

"Interfering" with a jury means corrupting them -- not telling them of their legal rights. Every judge would be interfering with a jury if that were so.

4 comments:

Bird of Paradise said...

Again they trash to constitution on the orders from the sinister ICC the creation of a leftists scumball BILL CLINTON

A. Levy said...

Her being a "Manhattan" prosecutor, automatically tells you she's a leftist Demoncrat, else she wouldn't have that job. And in NYC's borough of Manhattan, a place that makes San Francisco look conservative, they follow their own "constitution", one more in line with chairman Mao.

Anonymous said...

The only rights you are allowed to have are ones that do not annoy those in power.

Anonymous said...

Any cop who arrests him for jury tampering while knowing the particulars of what he is accused of doing should be charged with kidnapping.