When you sit on a jury, you may vote on the verdict according to your own conscience.
"TRUE", you say -- and you're right. But then...
In a trial by jury, the judge's job is to referee the trial and provide neutral legal advice to the jury, beginning with a full and truthful explanation of a juror's rights and responsibilities.
But judges rarely "fully inform" jurors of their rights, especially their power to judge the law itself and to vote on the verdict according to conscience. Instead, they end up assisting the prosecution by dismissing any prospective juror who will admit to knowing about this right -- starting with anyone who also admits having qualms with the law.
We can only speculate on why: Distrust of the citizen jury? Disrespect for the idea of government "of, by, and for the people"? Unwillingness to part with power? Ignorance of all the rights and powers that trial jurors necessarily acquire upon assuming the responsibility of judging a case? Actual concern that trial jurors might "misuse" their power if told about it?
Many people don't get fair trials. Too often, jurors actually end up apologizing to the person they've convicted -- or to the community for acquitting when evidence of guilt seems perfectly clear.
Something is definitely wrong when the jurors feel ashamed of their verdict. They should never have to explain "I wanted to use my conscience, but the judge made us take an oath to apply the law as given to us, like it or not."
Too often, jurors who try to vote their consciences are talked out of it by other jurors who don't know their rights, or who believe they are required to reach a unanimous verdict because the judge "said so".
If jurors were supposed to judge "only the facts", their job could be done by computer. It is precisely because people have feelings, opinions, wisdom, experience, and conscience that we depend upon jurors, not upon machines, to judge court cases.
What is the Fully Informed Jury Association -- "FlJA"?
"FIJA" is a national jury-education organization which both educates juries and promotes laws to require that judges resume telling trial jurors "the whole truth" about their rights, or at least to allow lawyers to tell them. FIJA believes "liberty and justice for all" won't return to America until the citizens are again fully informed of their power as jurors, and routinely put it to good use.
Yes, it was normal procedure in the early days of our country, and in colonial times. And if the judge didn't tell them, the defense attorney very often would. The nation's Founders understood that trials by juries of ordinary citizens, fully informed of their powers as jurors, would confine the government to its proper role as the servant, not the master, of the people.
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 understandings judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
Our third president, Thomas Jefferson , put it like this: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
Yes. Only four decades earlier, a jury had established freedom of the press in the colonies by finding John Peter Zenger not guilty of seditious libel. He had been arrested and charged for printing critical -- but true -- news stories about the Governor of New York Colony.
"Truth is no defense", the court told the jury! But the jury decided to reject bad law, and acquitted.
Why? Because defense attorney Andrew Hamilton informed the jury of its rights: he related the story of William Penn's trial -- of the courageous London jury which refused to find him guilty of preaching Quaker religious doctrine (at that time an illegal religion). His jurors stood by their verdict even though held without food, water, or toilet facilities for four days.
The jurors were fined and imprisoned for refusing to convict William Penn -- until England's highest court acknowledged their right to reject both law and fact and to find a verdict according to conscience. It was exercise of that right in Penn's trial which eventually led to recognition of free speech, freedom of religion, and of peaceable assembly as individual rights.
American colonial juries regularly thwarted bad law sent over from mother England. Britain then retaliated by restricting both trial by jury and other rights which juries had won or protected. Result? The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution!
Afterwards, to forever protect all the individual rights they'd fought for from future attacks by government, the Founders of these United States in three places included trial by jury -- meaning tough, fully informed juries -- in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
"Bad law" -- special-interest legislation which tramples our rights -- is no longer sent here from Britain. But our own legislatures keep us well supplied...That is why today, more than ever, we need juries to protect us!
In the late 1800's, powerful special-interest groups inspired a series of judicial decisions which tried to limit jury rights. While no court has yet dared to deny that juries can "nullify" or "veto" a law, or can bring in a "general verdict", some -- hypocritically -- have held that jurors need not be told about these rights!
Today, it's a rare and courageous attorney who will risk being cited for contempt for telling jurors their powers without first obtaining the judge's approval.
However, jury veto power is still recognized. In 1972 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the trial 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; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law (473F 2d1113)
Three good things:
As a juror, if you answer "no" to any of these questions, your vote should be "not guilty!"
You'll receive a free "Jury Power Information Kit" when you call 800-TEL-JURY and record your name and address. Or call FIJA National at (406) 793-5550.
To join FIJA National, send $15 (basic membership) to FIJA, P.O. Box 59, Helmville, MT 59843. We'll send the "Kit", your membership card, and the next four issues of our quarterly newsletter, the FIJActivist.
Locally, singlehandedly and in groups, FIJA activists hand out educational materials -- like this brochure -- in front of courthouses on jury selection days. In some states they press for FIJA legislation. Many sport FIJA t-shirts or bumber stickers, show or broadcast FIJA's public service announcements, or "speak FIJA" on local talk shows. And every September 5, activists around the nation celebrate *Jury Rights Day* (which has now been proclaimed official by several state governors.)
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