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Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 03:51:29 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: THE RIGHT OF JURIES TO JUDGE OF THE JUSTICE OF LAWS (fwd)
<snip>
>
><http://www.primenet.com/~slack/fija/spooner.txt>
>An ESSAY on Trial By Jury
>Lysander Spooner ( 1852 )
><exerpt>
>
> THE RIGHT OF JURIES TO JUDGE OF THE JUSTICE OF LAWS
>
> SECTION 1
>
>For more than six hundred years-- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--
>there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional
>law, than that: in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of
>juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the
>moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their
>primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold
>all laws invalid that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all
>persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of such laws.
>
>Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of
>juries being a "palladium of liberty"`-- a barrier against the tyranny and
>oppression of the government-- they are really mere tools in its hands,
>for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to
>have executed.
>
>But for their right to judge the law, and the justice of the law, juries
>would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact;
>for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a
>criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That
>is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible,
>and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted.
>
> [ Note: Judges today do this, and also determine
> what witnesses will be allowed
>
> Suggested Reading: _Justice Overruled_ (Burton Katz)
>
> -pma ]
>
>And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it
>can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition
>of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require
>them to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.
> * * *
>
>NAPFN/pma
>
<snip>
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Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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