End the War on Freedom

Last time I was called for jury duty I asked if the oath was optional. The judge told me it was not and I could be fined for contempt if I refused to take it. An oath must be freely given to be meaningful and any oath made under threat of punishment (the fancy word is "duress") is not binding on the speaker.

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I made another post in Petterico's thread:

I wasn’t proposing murdering the judge. I was proposing giving him a speedy trial and an immediate sentence for treason.

Trial by jury is the last defense we the people have against a rogue government. It exists to allow us to veto bad laws. Nullification is the only reason juries exist. If any one of twelve randomly selected jurors thinks that the alleged criminal should not be punished for whatever it is the government claims he did, then he walks. Messing with that, even a little bit, is a grave threat to the Republic, treason. Franklin warned us it would be difficult to keep it. He was right.

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I tried posting the following there last January, but it didn't "take", so it appears comments on that post are closed.

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> To supporters of jury nullification: would you violate your oath to follow the law, given under penalty of perjury, in order to bend the law to your own personal conception of "justice" in a particular case?

What do you mean by "the law"? Are you referring to "the supreme Law of the Land", or to the corpus juris: that is, statutes inferior to the Constitution which may or may not contravene and be repugnant to it, and which are (at the very least) subject to intelligent, principled, reasoned scrutiny -- by everyone, and not only magistrates? If the former, then what process of reasoning leads you to conclude that I'm the one who needs to "bend the law", as opposed to, say, the magistrate and his black-robed fraternity brothers needing to?

> "Do you, and each of you, understand and agree that you will well and truly try the case now pending before this court, and a true verdict render according only to the evidence presented to you and to the instructions of the court?"
Why do you assume that the oath actually is to follow the law, as distinct from (and possibly opposed to) following "the instructions of the court"? In other words, why do you assume that "the law" and "the instructions of the court" are equivalent? Are jurors just supposed to take it on faith that "the instructions of the court" and the law itself are equivalent? If so, why? How if "the instructions of the court" and the law itself are not in fact equivalent: can, with little effort, be shown not to be equivalent? What then?

Why do you assume that my ``own personal conception of "justice"'' is ipso facto wrong or inferior?

What process of reasoning leads you to conclude that I'm the one who "violates" anything real, as distinct from something fictitious?

So you see, Patterico, your question is not quite so simple as Yes-or-No; it bristles with unstated premises and unexamined implications, which intellectual honesty alone should impel us to state openly and scrutinize fearlessly. I, for one, don't grant the unstated premises of your question: not, at any rate, without stating them and scrutinizing them and seeing if they stand up.

The fundamental problem with the juror oath is that it's the wrong oath. It is cleverly and quite deliberately written to "pledge allegiance" to the wrong thing: the magistrate's "authoritah" rather than the supreme Law of the Land (to which magistrates -- so says that Law -- are bound by the act of appointment to office, regardless of whether or not they themselves take the customary oath of office).

> Nobody wants jurors to be mindless robots.

You are either consciously lying, or in 'Egyptian-river' mode, or shockingly naïve.

> We just want jurors not to make up their own laws.

Who is "we"? Have you got a mouse in your pocket? But be that as it may:

Congratulations, your wish is granted. (What process of reasoning leads you to the conclusion that jurors only refusing to enforce "laws" that somebody else made up is equivalent to "jurors making up their own laws"? That if jurors aren't enforcing somebody else's law A, then they must be enforcing their own law B, as distinct from just not enforcing any law?)

Oh, and if you're really so worried about juries convicting innocent defendants on the basis of simple bias &/or prejudice without regard to the law or the facts, then would it be impertinence to suggest that the government's agents not bring charges -- which juries can neither exceed nor initiate, please note -- against innocents in the first place?

But past all that: As a practical matter, how does the magistrate propose to prove that a juror "violated" his "oath" &/or committed perjury? Will he barge into the jury room to witness it himself? Will he place a microphone (hidden or otherwise) in the jury room? Or is he restrained by federal law from these acts, such that he must depend upon "snitches" to inform him about "rogue" jurors? And if he does depend on "snitches", what then? How will he discover any corroborating evidence of the allegation, which could just as easily be false as be true? Will he question the "rogue" juror directly? If so, then what prevents said juror from replying to all questions: "Pursuant to the supreme Law of the Land, I claim my right to remain silent"? What is the magistrate's remedy at that point? Will he cite said juror for contempt of court? (Really?) Will he excuse that juror and appoint a substitute? (Really?) Will he declare a mistrial (I heartily concur, for different reasons)?

*sigh* It's the same old timeworn confidence trick: one agrees, then agrees to a little more, then a little more, until finally one finds oneself agreed into a noose. And where the confidence trick doesn't avail, intimidation and "social pressure" will.

Meanwhile, justice for the accused is going begging. Nope, sorry; not on my watch, Buster Brown.

I submit that when magistrates declare that the Constitution--the "supreme Law of the Land", mind you--is not admissible or permissible to be discussed in "their" courtrooms, then it isn't jurors who are ignorant of the law, and it isn't juries who are being "lawless". (Unless, of course, "the courts" aren't true Article-III courts, which would explain this behavior from the magistrate, and would also raise the natural question of what kind of courts they are . . . ?)
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"Petterico" would seem to be an appropriate misspelling.

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