court trial against me - the outcome

[Scott Bennett]

     On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:46:03 -0800 "F. Fox" <kitsune.or at gmail.com>
wrote:
>Andrew Del Vecchio wrote:
>> Mark,
>> 	In absentia was always there, it just wasn't SOP like it is now. BTW,
>> are you familiar with jury nullification? It was a victim of the last
>> round of substance prohibition in the 20s and 30s. Essentially, jurors
>> have the (no longer honored) right to find a defendant 'not guilty' if
>> they feel that the law he is accused of breaking is BS. See
>> http://fija.org/ for more details.
>> 
>> ~Andrew
>(much snippage)
>
>It's a shame they don't have that right any more.

     Where did you get that idea?  In all countries with juries modeled upon
or descended from the English common law juries, nullification is still an
option available to juries.  Moreover, it is the *duty* of jurors to exercise
it in appropriate situations.  The U.S. is a special case of such countries
in that an acquittal is final and unreviewable by any court.  The "no double
jeopardy" clause of Amendment VII to the Constitution for the United States
of America was put there to prevent retrials of charges against persons for
which those persons have been acquitted, an abuse that still goes on today
in Canada and England.  Nevertheless, jury nullification is a legitimate
duty of jurors in standing between the state and the individual, in which
the state must get the permission of a cross-section of the populace to
administer punishments, to prevent abuses, even in countries where the state
can keep retrying its victims with jury after jury until it finds a jury that
will convict.  The delays and expense involved can keep an innocent person
alive at least that much longer and may eventually cause the state to give up
its prosecution of the charge(s) against that individual.
     Colonial juries often protected colonists against the Crown's abuses,
which lead to creation of courts of admiralty (known today as administrative
law courts, now unconstitutional yet upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court), which
did not use juries.  I gather that such courts resemble the court that Mirko
faced in Germany.  I don't know enough about Germany's judicial system to know
whether any trials there use juries of peers today, but it is noteworthy that
the 1500-year-old English tradition of trial by peers was brought to England
by the Saxons.  If it no longer survives in Germany, then that is tragic.
     In any case, tor server operators in the U.K., the U.S. of A., Canada,
and Australia need to be informed of their rights should they ever serve on
juries.  Although a prosecutor might eliminate them from a jury trying a case
against another tor server operator, it is entirely possible that the
prosecutor might not think to ask the potential jurors whether they knew about
tor.  It is also in the interests of tor server operators in these countries
to help spread the information about jurors' rights throughout the general
populations to increase the chances of getting at least one informed juror
selected to serve as a juror in any particular trial of a tor server operator.
>
>Laws have a purpose IMO, but they should go only as far as is absolutely
>necessary.
>
     Naturally, the peoples of the various countries have their own views of
the laws of their countries, and those views may agree or disagree with the
views of prosecutors in those countries.  Where juries of peers are trying
the cases, juries have the power and the duty to correct the prosecutors.
In the U.S., juries successfully undermined the Fugitive Slave Act, alcohol
prohibition, and other abuses by refusing to convict, thereby refusing to
confirm the actions of the Congresses that had passed those Acts.  If this
option is not available to the people of Germany, then they may wish to
reconsider, and possibly revise, the current form of their judicial system.
     After all, governments only legitimately exist to serve the People.
When and where they are not serving the People, they are obviously
illegitimate.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
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