Pubdate: Mon, 26 Oct 2015
Source: Trentonian, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2015 The Trentonian
Contact:  http://www.trentonian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006
Author: Ed Forchion, For The Trentonian njweedman.com

IS "JURY NULLIFICATION" A CAUSE TO GO TO JAIL FOR? YES

I ask and answer this because I'll probably be arrested on Monday 
October 26 in front of the Ocean County Courthouse for passing out 
jury nullification awareness literature in defiance of an illegal 
verbal order issued by Lieutenant Green of the Ocean County Sheriff's 
Department at the behest of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office. I 
feel no remorse for not complying with this unconstitutional order. 
So I expect to be jailed; the only question is, for how long? How 
this came to be: Last week, libertarian activist and Fully Informed 
Jury Association (FIJA) member Jim Babb was ordered to leave the 
public area in front of the Ocean County Courthouse before being 
threatened with arrest and told he was being investigated for jury 
tampering for passing out fija.org-jury rights literature. (Please 
watch this video: http://tinyurl.com/ ocsherriff)

This is bogus - it's the prosecution that tampers with a jury. They 
are they ones who make sure the jurors are uninformed of their 
rights, to ensure an advantage, to steal true justice from us - we the people.

Most people have no idea what jury nullification is, which is a shame 
because it was the intended barrier the Founding Fathers put in place 
in this country's judicial system to prevent oppression by the 
government in the form of unjust, unpopular laws. So I will explain.

It's the reason we have the Sixth and Seventh Amendments right to a 
jury trial and a fair trial. The founders of our country empowered 
juries to reject unpopular or unjust laws.

Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a verdict of "not 
guilty" even though its members believe the defendant is in fact 
guilty of the violation with which he or she is charged. The jury 
effectively nullifies a law that the members believe is either 
immoral or being wrongly applied to the defendant (whose fate they 
are charged with deciding).

The New Jersey Constitution actually very clearly gives jurors this 
right to reject a law (article 1, paragraph 6): "In all prosecutions 
or indictment . . . the truth maybe given to the jurors as 
evidence...the jury may judge the law as well as the facts." It is an 
absolute fact that jurors in NJ have the right to judge a law and 
reject any law. I believe in this and have tried for years to get 
this information out to potential jurors. I could just as easily be 
called Jury Nullification Man.

Prosecutors, judges, and even defense attorneys have self-servingly 
conspired to withhold this information from NJ jurors, as the Ocean 
County authorities are doing now. They all reap the benefits of an 
uninformed jury; they get to pretend they are the final arbiters of 
the law, when that is Constitutionally false. I've been to numerous 
trials - judges actually lie to jurors by omission. When they give 
instructions to a jury, NJ judges never inform jury members their 
duties entail the right to judge the very law the defendant is 
charged with violating, per NJ Const. art. 1, par. 6.

As a very active marijuana legalization proponent, I know the stats. 
The marijuana laws are the most violated and unpopular laws on the 
nation's books, and most people believe marijuana should be legal. 
I've always thought, even in the most Baptist of churches, members 
wouldn't want to send someone to prison for a plant "God" created. If 
they did, plenty of Baptist churchgoers would say "not guilty" in the 
face of actual "guilt."

I've been a proponent of jury nullification as a means of ending the 
war on pot for decades. It has been clear to me since the '90s that 
if the American people knew they could simply ignore the prosecutors' 
and judges' explanation of a law and judged it themselves, certain 
laws like the marijuana laws wouldn't be enforced by juries. I 
believe there would constantly be hung juries, which is what occurred 
during Prohibition in the '20s and with regard to the Fugitive Slave 
Act of 1850. Juries rejected those laws themselves and refused to 
convict citizens for violating them. These actions of jurors helped 
destroy these unpopular laws, and I believe this is one route to 
ending cannabis prohibition now.

I openly have never complied with the marijuana laws. My signature 
quote is "F the law, smoke it anyway." I've gone on trial three times 
for marijuana in the last 15 years. All three times I've tried to get 
my jurors to reject the law and find me not guilty despite my 
actually being guilty. (2-1)

During the first trial (September 2000), I was confident I could get 
at least one juror to reject the law and say "not guilty." But on the 
third day of the trial I capitulated and accepted a plea deal. Yet, 
as part of my acceptance of the plea the judge - Judge Thompson - 
allowed me to poll my jurors after I accepted the deal. Four members 
of my jury indicated they would have said "not guilty" despite my 
having admitted to violating the NJ marijuana laws, and my insistence 
that the law was wrong. I always regretted that plea, and my not 
standing by my beliefs. It was a rare moment of weakness on my part 
that cost me a couple years behind bars.

So when I went on trial a second time in May 2012 for possession with 
intent to distribute, I refused to hear any plea deals from 
Burlington County Prosecutor M. Luciano. Instead I represented myself 
and recited art. 1, par. 6 numerous times. Protesters, including Jim 
Babb, distributed jury nullification literature outside the BurlCo 
Courthouse, and the newspapers wrote about it.

Again, I presented a defense that I wasn't wrong, the law was wrong. 
Unfortunately for Luciano, he got quite a shock when the jury hung 
7-5. I knew seven jurors obviously rejected the law's claim that I 
was trying to distribute.

Instead of leaving it at that "hung jury," Unlucky Luciano decided to 
re-try me for the same charge in October 2012. I expected another 
hung jury but to my shock, the jury found me "not guilty" (12-0) 
despite the fact that I admitted to everything. Factually I was 
guilty of violating the law; I had a pound of marijuana, but 
obviously the members of my jury rejected that and found me "not 
guilty." I tout this as a jury nullification verdict, as Trentonian 
Columnist Jeff Edelstein wrote at the time "Jury upends marijuana 
laws, Weedman Walks."

I put my life and freedom on the line to prove a point and to bring 
public awareness to this concept as a means to defeat the Lawyer 
Associations' war on pot and to support those who reject the lies of 
government that this most beneficial plant is a Schedule I controlled 
substance. By law a Schedule 1 substance has no medical value. So 
it's clear marijuana is not a Schedule I drug, the government lies 
about this-especially in court. Hypocritically, NJ even passed its 
own medical marijuana law in 2010. Just look up the definition of 
"Schedule I drug" and you'll see marijuana doesn't fit, so in my 
opinion all jurors should acquit. The law is a lie.

I am free to write this column solely because the members of my Oct 
2012 jury nullified the law in my case - thank you again. Otherwise 
I'd be three years into a 10-year sentence.

Which brings me back now to Ocean County. There is a trial going on 
there - a citizen named John Peditto, a Facebook friend of mine, is 
facing 10 years in prison for having 17 plants. He followed my case 
and decided to use the NJWeedman Defense: admit to everything and 
hope his jury uses jury nullification and rejects the law as well. I 
feel a connection with him, and an obligation to help him. He is 
attempting to pull his life and freedom out of the tyranny of the 
Ocean County Prosecutor's vise like I did with the Burlington County 
Prosecutors in 2012.

If my getting arrested on Monday for passing out jury nullification 
literature makes the Tuesday morning papers and one of his jurors 
sees the explanation of jury nullification and realizes they too 
could simply say "not guilty," I feel it will have been worth it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom