UPDATE: Jury Nullification Information Barred By "Common Law" Judge

I posted a thread the other day of the Central FL chief judge admitting that the court was a common law court on video.

For those that missed it, at the 6:19 mark of the video below is where the judge makes that admission.



Now, this same judge just gave an order barring anyone from approaching juror with pamphlets "educating" any juror about jury nullification.

Retired New Jersey chemistry professor Julian Heicklen scheduled an activity-filled trip to Florida this week: First, he handed out jury information pamphlets in Fort Lauderdale and then gave a speech to South Florida Libertarians. Today, Heicklen plans to distribute jury pamphlets outside the Orange County Courthouse -- with the expectation that he will be arrested.

Today, he intends to defy Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry's order blocking individuals from approaching jurors at the courthouse with pamphlets aimed at "educating" them and influencing their decision-making.

Then, the hero of this story says to the paper:

"The people of the United States are sovereign. Judge Perry is my paid employee," he said. "He does what I tell him to do, and he's going to do what I tell him to do because I pay his salary. And if he doesn't I'm going to have him fired. He works for me. I don't work for him."

The thing that I find really awesome with this story is that Orlando's biggest newspaper carried the story which might open a few people's eyes and drive them to Google to find out more about this "jury nullification thing".

The sad thing is that our "common law judge" actually ordered people arrested for teaching others about jury nullification.

What's your stand on jury nullification?

The newspaper story is here.

Imagine that!
ANOTHER instance of an employee dictating terms of his employment and duties to the employers!
AND just as like other instances in the news, the true facts of the matter, that the employers are the true ultimate authority to decide what they expect from their employees is denied and suppressed and those that are the only ones that are entitled to make changes, have no standing in their own headquarters, thus have the employees decreed themselves to have standing in such matters.
Oh flick are we so dead and buried!!

Lury Nullification has been around a long time. It is real law. It is a law that gives the jurors the right to set the punishement. NOT the judge. Judges and D.A.'s HATE it,so they not only ignore this constitutional right,they forbid it from being introduced to jurers.
If you want want to Tee of a judge or D.A.,go ahead and suggest you want the Jury to know their rights about jury nullification!

Maybe, just maybe, more people will learn about this,and grow some watermellons to exercise this right.

I'd flag this 10 times and make every ATS member read and learn this right if I could.

Oh... Want to get out of jury duty? Just MENTION you believe in Jury Nullification... NEXT!!!!

Originally posted by niceguybob
Lury Nullification has been around a long time. It is real law. It is a law that gives the jurors the right to set the punishement. NOT the judge. Judges and D.A.'s HATE it,so they not only ignore this constitutional right,they forbid it from being introduced to jurers.
If you want want to Tee of a judge or D.A.,go ahead and suggest you want the Jury to know their rights about jury nullification!

Maybe, just maybe, more people will learn about this,and grow some watermellons to exercise this right.

I'd flag this 10 times and make every ATS member read and learn this right if I could.

Oh... Want to get out of jury duty? Just MENTION you believe in Jury Nullification... NEXT!!!!

So youre saying that there are those IN THE MAJORITY in govt and administration that are involved in an ongoing widespread conspiracy of lying to the public by with holding FACTS as pattern for implementing control of the public by fraudulently limiting acceptable options to their reign? heaven forbid they start withholding documentation by claiming the public has no right to the public records of their employees and representatives. Man! THAT would be cause for torches and pitchforks in the streets!
Fascinating!

That's exactly what I'm saying. The Jury is allowed to add or reduce the sentencing time based on the evidence.
NOT the penal code set by the courts. The court does NOT have more rights then the Jurers themselves.
The Jurers are allowed by law, to make the sentancing. Judges and prosecutors do not recognize this... by choice.

Just an old law on the books.. Bulldinky.!

Originally posted by niceguybob
That's exactly what I'm saying. The Jury is allowed to add or reduce the sentencing time based on the evidence.
NOT the penal code set by the courts. The court does NOT have more rights then the Jurers themselves.
The Jurers are allowed by law, to make the sentancing. Judges and prosecutors do not recognize this... by choice.

Just an old law on the books.. Bulldinky.!

This jogs my memory a bit, but I can't actually recall why and what about...

In any case, perhaps what you guys in the US need to do is rethink your system of judicial appointments. In England and Wales, our Judges are not elected and do not therefore feel that they either have to be harsh or lenient in accordance with their political affiliation (although with that being said, they are often lenient given the prevailing public and institutional attitude towards rehabilitation rather than pure punishment of offenders).

As I recall in the US, certain defendants were pretty much doomed if they went before a certain judge because he was 'especially harsh on meth offences' (for instance) - was justice not meant to be blind?

reply to post by duality90



In the states, most judges are voted in, and mostly lawyers vote for those that promise the most business and favors. Even at the level where judges are appointed, they had to survive the initial process and the opinions that matter most to them, which is the good word of those that ply their trade in front of them, not the ones that pay them.
In america the law is now aligned only to find that one most capable of paying for the process, at fault, as no money is to made by finding the poor or indigent liable for damages and fines, unless public moniesbecome attachable, as in the case of the WBC scam. This is somewhat different than in your country where the over riding principle is that your subjecthood to the crown or its' assigns be maintained at all costs. All your courts have to prove is that youre a subject and have only the priviliges they allow and thats easy, which is why theyre doing that here currently.

reply to post by greenovni


The judge has 'had a talking to' i expect, and is now worried silly about losing his cushy little number, more than he is about justice and truth...figures.

He has *NO* authority to prevent a sovereign individual from talking to other sovereign individuals about their constitutional rights, and rights under common law. No authority at all.

Jury Nullification is a legitimate and lawful option for juries, for a judge supposedly having sworn an oath to uphold common law and the US constitutional rights of Americans, to pretend he has the right to *order* a sovereign to a.) Not speak to others (regardless of being on a jury or not) and b.) Not to inform others of their legitimate rights under common law, is patently ridiculous and bordering on treasonous.

If the protester is arrested for exercising his common law and constitutional rights, the judge should also be arrested for breaking his oath and unlawful conduct in a common law court.

I doubt he'll be so quick to claim the court is a common law court again.

The entire judiciary in the U.S. has become a joke. When they arent legislating from the bench, they are allowing their personal biases to shape their decisions. In our current times, judges are nothing more than power hungry parasites.

All of them need to go.

"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy." - John Jay, Founding Father and first Chief Justice of the United States.

Whats funny about this is, people are arrested alot for handing out jury nullification literature, but the cases never go to trail because it would have to be explained to the jury ie. what law was broken , what the literature was about
The reason these people are arrested is for providing information to JURORS about JUROR NULLIFICATION !
Do you think a judge or a D.A. is going to tell a jury that ?????????

Glad someone is doing something. I was charged with a first degree misdemeanor and they dropped it down to an ordinance at my final pre trail just so I could not get a jury trail and the judge would obviously not rule in my favor. They don't want me in front of a jury I might tell the truth lol. Its all about the money...

Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by greenovni

 

The judge has 'had a talking to' i expect, and is now worried silly about losing his cushy little number, more than he is about justice and truth...figures.

He has *NO* authority to prevent a sovereign individual from talking to other sovereign individuals about their constitutional rights, and rights under common law. No authority at all.

Jury Nullification is a legitimate and lawful option for juries, for a judge supposedly having sworn an oath to uphold common law and the US constitutional rights of Americans, to pretend he has the right to *order* a sovereign to a.) Not speak to others (regardless of being on a jury or not) and b.) Not to inform others of their legitimate rights under common law, is patently ridiculous and bordering on treasonous.

If the protester is arrested for exercising his common law and constitutional rights, the judge should also be arrested for breaking his oath and unlawful conduct in a common law court.

I doubt he'll be so quick to claim the court is a common law court again.

To be fair, everyone might be hugely overreacting a bit here and taking from the circumstances what they want to.

The whole idea is that the jury is to be entirely free from outside influence so that they may be as impartial as is possible. Perhaps that is why they sought to restrain members of the public passing information to the jury/trying to influence their decision?

Why everyone continually seems to be ranting lately about 'common law' courts, I don't know. As many posters have pointed out, the common-law is simply a body of previously decided cases which give effect to legal principles and rules. If admiralty law is based on prior decisions (which I suspect strongly that is) then admiralty law is another arm of the common-law system. The 'common-law' is a theoretical construct used to describe a body of rules. It is nothing more than that, despite everyone insisting that your 'common-law rights' preclude you from judicial scrutiny.

Originally posted by Teckniec
Glad someone is doing something. I was charged with a first degree misdemeanor and they dropped it down to an ordinance at my final pre trail just so I could not get a jury trail and the judge would obviously not rule in my favor. They don't want me in front of a jury I might tell the truth lol. Its all about the money...

It depends. Class C misdemeanours (and in some cases Class Bs) in many states do not warrant jail-time, so you could ostensibly make the argument that the fines imposed by them are used wrongly for county profit.

In the case of Class A's (if I recall correctly they can incur properly long, custodial sentences) it is ostensibly not to the benefit of the county or state (believe it or not) to put you in prison. Yes, 'elected' officials (the DA for instance - which I consider to be a serious breach of legal impartiality in my own opinion) have to please their electorate, but if the state can avoid it, it would rather not be paying a large amount of money to imprison you for a crime which does not make you a danger to the public. Unfortunately, politicians like to appeal to voters by 'being hard on crime', and thus there is sometimes a bind which the legal system finds itself in which it cannot avoid and thus can do nothing (by virtue of statutory laws or criminal code prescriptions) except give a custodial sentence.

Otherwise you end up in a situation like California's where a staggering amount of cash is wasted on locking up essentially non-violent criminals (i.e. people in possession of small amounts of drugs).

Jury Nullification is not quite what most of you here are claiming. First of all, it's not a "law" as in a law on the books; it's a right, so to speak, but is not enumerated. You won't find it in the Constitution. Simply put, jury nullification is the ability of a juror to vote "Not Guilty" even if the defendant is, in fact, guilty and has violated the law.

The last time this came up in my county was in a marijuana trial. The idea was that possessing marijuana should not be a crime, therefore a juror can vote "Not Guilty" despite the fact there is a law on the books that says marijuana possession is a crime. I'm sure we all know many people who would agree with this sentiment. The judge will tell you if it has been proven a crime has been committed, you MUST vote guilty and, by virtue of you having taken an poath to uphold the law, you've already obligated yourself to vote guilty if it has been proven. Jury nullification disputes this.

But crack it up a notch. A fellow in our area preached jury nullification. He said that if a Black man was guilty of murder, you should vote "Not Guilty" BECAUSE he is Black, and Blacks have been mistreated historically, etc. Now this guy just raped and killed your kid sister. Do you think he should get off?

With jury nullification, that's the idea. Be careful what you embrace.

BTW, the same guy later killed a police officer and is now awaiting trial.

Originally posted by FriedrichNeecher
reply to post by duality90

 

In the states, most judges are voted in, and mostly lawyers vote for those that promise the most business and favors. Even at the level where judges are appointed, they had to survive the initial process and the opinions that matter most to them, which is the good word of those that ply their trade in front of them, not the ones that pay them.
In america the law is now aligned only to find that one most capable of paying for the process, at fault, as no money is to made by finding the poor or indigent liable for damages and fines, unless public moniesbecome attachable, as in the case of the WBC scam. This is somewhat different than in your country where the over riding principle is that your subjecthood to the crown or its' assigns be maintained at all costs. All your courts have to prove is that youre a subject and have only the priviliges they allow and thats easy, which is why theyre doing that here currently.

Er, you do of course realize the votes are public right? It is not limited to members of that state's Bar Association. Why you insist that there is some conspiracy to install favourable judges? How would that even make sense? Judges do not choose which lawyers hear which cases. Furthermore, in the realm of criminal law, how would this benefit lawyers? In many cases the defendants are not on trial for a seizure of assets (as that would normally be pursued in a civil action), and are merely on trial to determine whether or not they will be convicted of a common-law or statutory crime and sentenced to a prison term or other punitive sentence. How could a defense lawyer possibly benefit from a judge willing to either convict or spare a client? I hate to tell you but it is a well-known fact within the legal profession that those who choose life as a criminal lawyer (be that either as a prosecutor or a defender) typically go to a life of extreme workloads and little remuneration to show for it.

There are obviously 'celebrity' defense lawyers like Johnny Cochrane, but they are very rare in that most lawyers, contrary to popular belief, are not actually that well paid. For instance, the man widely regarded as one of the finest legal minds in the UK (Jonathan Sumption QC) and who has been involved in many, many high-profile cases, has admitted to only earning a little over a million pounds a year, despite his being at the top of his game.

Is that really alot of money, when you consider the incredible exercise that advocacy in complex and large commercial cases is? Particularly when you consider the often vast sums of money that turn on the decisions of the court (based on the persuasiveness of council, in part) I would argue that a man of his intellectual calibre is underpaid for the work he does.

You should look outside of the US - lawyers actually generally try to avoid over-litigiousness because (for obvious reasons) lawyers feel that it reflects very poorly on the profession. Perhaps if juries weren't quite so readily willing to award the absurd amounts in damages that one often sees in American tort cases, your system wouldn't be quite so infested with ambulance-chasers willing to do anything necessary to turn a quick buck.

Originally posted by schuyler
Jury Nullification is not quite what most of you here are claiming. First of all, it's not a "law" as in a law on the books; it's a right, so to speak, but is not enumerated. You won't find it in the Constitution. Simply put, jury nullification is the ability of a juror to vote "Not Guilty" even if the defendant is, in fact, guilty and has violated the law.

The last time this came up in my county was in a marijuana trial. The idea was that possessing marijuana should not be a crime, therefore a juror can vote "Not Guilty" despite the fact there is a law on the books that says marijuana possession is a crime. I'm sure we all know many people who would agree with this sentiment. The judge will tell you if it has been proven a crime has been committed, you MUST vote guilty and, by virtue of you having taken an poath to uphold the law, you've already obligated yourself to vote guilty if it has been proven. Jury nullification disputes this.

But crack it up a notch. A fellow in our area preached jury nullification. He said that if a Black man was guilty of murder, you should vote "Not Guilty" BECAUSE he is Black, and Blacks have been mistreated historically, etc. Now this guy just raped and killed your kid sister. Do you think he should get off?

With jury nullification, that's the idea. Be careful what you embrace.

BTW, the same guy later killed a police officer and is now awaiting trial.

Ah yes, the problem of the 'perverse jury' who are unwilling to convict despite the defendant's obvious guilt.

I'm not actually sure what the law is in America on perverse juries, but I recall in some civil cases over here in the UK, on appeal a re-trial was given (although on what basis I can't recall). I think the case was Groebelaar v World News Newspapers, although I can't recall with certainty.

And what's this? a Lawyer talking on these forums? Didn't you know that you are part of the "priest lawyer class" (as on poster insisted on describing lawyers) that is a 'tool of the system' out to brutalize clients for profit? It must be all that brainwashing they gave you at law school (although some of us would call it an education in the laws of this land, some people are obviously very opinionated).

(final year law student btw having a hell of a time debating everyone on ATS who insists that the American legal system is somehow run by Britain - must be why our nation is in the midst of austerity measures, with all that money coming in from the colonies and all...)

Originally posted by duality90

Originally posted by Teckniec
Glad someone is doing something. I was charged with a first degree misdemeanor and they dropped it down to an ordinance at my final pre trail just so I could not get a jury trail and the judge would obviously not rule in my favor. They don't want me in front of a jury I might tell the truth lol. Its all about the money...

It depends. Class C misdemeanours (and in some cases Class Bs) in many states do not warrant jail-time, so you could ostensibly make the argument that the fines imposed by them are used wrongly for county profit.

In the case of Class A's (if I recall correctly they can incur properly long, custodial sentences) it is ostensibly not to the benefit of the county or state (believe it or not) to put you in prison. Yes, 'elected' officials (the DA for instance - which I consider to be a serious breach of legal impartiality in my own opinion) have to please their electorate, but if the state can avoid it, it would rather not be paying a large amount of money to imprison you for a crime which does not make you a danger to the public. Unfortunately, politicians like to appeal to voters by 'being hard on crime', and thus there is sometimes a bind which the legal system finds itself in which it cannot avoid and thus can do nothing (by virtue of statutory laws or criminal code prescriptions) except give a custodial sentence.

Otherwise you end up in a situation like California's where a staggering amount of cash is wasted on locking up essentially non-violent criminals (i.e. people in possession of small amounts of drugs).

A class D misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail. Of course for a first "offender" I would not be facing jail time. I'm still getting my jury whether he likes it or not lol

Originally posted by Teckniec

Originally posted by duality90

Originally posted by Teckniec
Glad someone is doing something. I was charged with a first degree misdemeanor and they dropped it down to an ordinance at my final pre trail just so I could not get a jury trail and the judge would obviously not rule in my favor. They don't want me in front of a jury I might tell the truth lol. Its all about the money...

It depends. Class C misdemeanours (and in some cases Class Bs) in many states do not warrant jail-time, so you could ostensibly make the argument that the fines imposed by them are used wrongly for county profit.

In the case of Class A's (if I recall correctly they can incur properly long, custodial sentences) it is ostensibly not to the benefit of the county or state (believe it or not) to put you in prison. Yes, 'elected' officials (the DA for instance - which I consider to be a serious breach of legal impartiality in my own opinion) have to please their electorate, but if the state can avoid it, it would rather not be paying a large amount of money to imprison you for a crime which does not make you a danger to the public. Unfortunately, politicians like to appeal to voters by 'being hard on crime', and thus there is sometimes a bind which the legal system finds itself in which it cannot avoid and thus can do nothing (by virtue of statutory laws or criminal code prescriptions) except give a custodial sentence.

Otherwise you end up in a situation like California's where a staggering amount of cash is wasted on locking up essentially non-violent criminals (i.e. people in possession of small amounts of drugs).

A class D misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail. Of course for a first "offender" I would not be facing jail time. I'm still getting my jury whether he likes it or not lol

Never thought I'd see somewhere with stricter repercussions in the criminal justice system than texas haha. Fair enough as well, you're more than entitled to do it and it can't do you any harm in trying to prove your innocence/discharge any presumption of guilt.

reply to post by schuyler


Jury nullification is the fourth branch of power in the United States. It is the hidden check and balance against all three branches of government. Any law passed and enforced on a citizen can be nullified by the jury by simply not recognizing the law as valid, or the offender as guilty. I am glad you corrected the obvious misunderstanding of jury nullification by most members above. If we are serious about taking our country back, everyone needs to get on a jury. When the government places someone on trial for a crime the jury can find them not guilty. This tactic is especially effective when it comes to bogus types of laws or laws which do not reflect the traditions of society.