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![]()
— editor
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Waddle Away, Scott Free
Sam Aurelius Milam III ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Poor No Philtre
![]() Another Prohibition — Educated Jurors Sam Aurelius Milam III ![]() ![]()
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Letters to the Editor
— Steve; Fremont, California
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union carbide is now dow's 100% owned subsidiary.
dow refuses to accept criminal liability for the disaster while union carbide
and its former chairman warren anderson continue to abscond justice in
indian courts.
![]() — satinath; bhopal
— editor
— Estaben; Santa Rosa, California
— Steven; Santa Rosa, California
— editor
Games For When We Are Older
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Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth Dear Buck ![]() — Gardener
![]() Dear Gardener ![]() Acknowledgments
— editor
Frontiersman ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() — Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor
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In a courtroom, the Jurors are in charge and are empowered to seek Justice. The Judge is there only to serve as administrator and adviser. However, over the years our courts, with the help of the State Legislature, has devised ways to steal back control from the Jurors and put it into the hands of the Judge who is sworn to "uphold the law" rather then to seek Justice. This difference between Justice and Law is important to understand since lately more and more laws ignore and/or violate the rights of the individual in favor of enforcing so called "Fairness", "Political Correctness" or "Cultural Standards". The US Supreme Court has ruled that a Jury does have the right to question the law but that they can be legally kept in the dark about it so as to discourage their use of this power. As a result the courts now use questionnaires to try to weed out those jurors that know about this right. During the trial an attorney can even be cited with Contempt of Court if he so much as mentions to the jury that they have this power. For more information visit the Fully Informed Juror Association web-site: http://www.fija.org/ Once the jury is selected the judge then attempts to control what evidence that the jury even hears about. For example, where a defendant is facing a "Three Strikes" conviction that would result in an absurd amount of time in prison for a minor crime, the jury is purposely left uninformed. The hope is that they will only judge the "facts of the case" and blindly enforce the law rather then act to prevent a miscarriage of justice. The Big Lie: "That Law is Sacred". That because someone "Broke the Law" gives the Justice System the moral right to put that person in prison or otherwise punish him or her. This just isn't so. More and more it is the law that is morally wrong and not the lawbreaker. Laws that fail to acknowledge the rights and property of the individual are simply Bad Laws and should be ignored by Juries in their search for Justice. The Drug War: Controlling what people put in their own bodies. These laws are about things that the "Public" doesn't even own therefore has no right to enforce on the individual. Only if the drug user/seller was initiating violence or was on public property while "drunk and disorderly", or operating a vehicle while under the influence, does the public have the jurisdiction to enforce these laws. Even then the punishment must be consistent with the crime -- say, comparable to that for the misuse of alcohol. Because the punishment for possessing or transporting a "Controlled Substance" on public property is so completely out of proportion to what at most should only be a "ticketed infraction", the Juror may choose to find the defendant "Not Guilty". The Witch-Hunt: Catching the Child Molester. Yes, people that commit Sexual Assault/Rape against a child should be put away forever. However some people charged with molesting a child are really only guilty of "Inappropriate Affection". This is particularly the case if the instigator is someone close to the child such as a parent, sibling, uncle, or teacher. The "Harm" supposedly done is in introducing that child to the |
pleasures of sexual contact at too early an age;
this could result in the child becoming sexually active in their teenage
years, having many sexual partners, and not fitting into our monogamous
Christian culture.
While some punishment would be appropriate in these cases, the punishment resulting from a "Guilty" verdict is again so far out of proportion to the real crime of "Custodial Interference" that a juror may choose to find the defendant "Not Guilty" just to avoid a miscarriage of Justice. Fact: Police Falsify Evidence and lie in Sworn Statements. After the police decide who is guilty, they don't trust a jury to reach the same decision so they "stack the deck" against the defendant by blatantly lying under oath and falsifying evidence. Recent examples where the police where actually caught include LA Rampart division and Oakland Police corruption. The police know that the judge will usually look the other way and at most will simply disallow the evidence. In reality evidence tampering is a far more heinous crime then that committed by many of the defendants the police are witnessing against. Example:
In one such case, Officer Brenda Herbert of the SJPD even provided voiceovers to help an edited portion of conversation fit in better with the original conversation. Later in a sworn statement she says that the tapes were not altered in any fashion (as if a police officer that altered evidence would actually admit it), and sites her long service in the police department as proof. Judge Daniel Creed of the SCC Superior Court then used her statement as justification as to why he would not allow the tapes to be analyzed by a forensic expert for proof of alteration. He had to know he was covering up for Bad Cops. In Summation: A Juror has the Right to question the law (and can decide to do this even after answering a questionnaire to the contrary) and has the Duty to stop a miscarriage of justice. Also, if a juror strongly suspects that a police officer has lied or altered or hidden evidence then the defendant needs to be found "Not Guilty" simply to stop police from using these tactics in the future. The major threats to our freedoms come not from the occasional lawbreaker that goes free but from the corrupt Legislature, Judge and Police Officer that continue to subvert our Justice System into a Police State. This paper has been written by: John Webster -- Libertarian Activist
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