Jury Nullification: Why Every American Needs to Learn This Taboo Verdict

Clerk Note: Needs to be exercised more and more. Take control of our laws.

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Jury Nullification: Why Every American Needs to Learn This Taboo Verdict

Link: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23929-jury-nullification-why-every-american-needs-to-learn-this-taboo-verdict

By: Kevin Mathews
Date: 2014-05-25

Did you know that, no matter the evidence, if a jury feels a law is unjust, it is permitted to “nullify” the law rather than finding someone guilty? Basically, jury nullification is a jury’s way of saying, “By the letter of the law, the defendant is guilty, but we also disagree with that law, so we vote to not punish the accused.” Ultimately, the verdict serves as an acquittal.

Haven’t heard of jury nullification? Don’t feel bad; you’re far from alone. If anything, your unfamiliarity is by design. Generally, defense lawyers are not allowed to even mention jury nullification as a possibility during a trial because judges prefer juries to follow the general protocols rather than delivering independent verdicts.

Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected

Wikileaks must be protected
http://www.truth-out.org/why-wikileaks-must-be-protected62462

Friday 20 August 2010

by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that, today, there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times are but a fraction.

There is, understandably, hysteria on high, with demands that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be "hunted down" and "rendered." In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defense Department official and asked, "Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?" He replied, "It's not my position to give guarantees on anything." He referred me to the "ongoing criminal investigation" of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to "fatally marginalize" WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

Court rejects govt. use of GPS tracking; Reverse sentence of accused drug-ring master

Vatic Note:   I find it extremely interesting that a technicality in the law allowed this Huge drug dealer, in fact, a ring master, to go free when so many who were proven innocent after conviction, are still sitting in jail with no one willing to release them, using the justification that "they were found guilty and thus must serve out their sentence", and that includes death penalty cases. .   Then it entered my mind that many in our leadership are involved either in the actual drug dealings and profits going on, or in the money laundering side of the Business and/or are being compensated for prisoners for the private-for-profit prison system contracts, such as prosecutors and judges,  however, this one did not fit in any of these categories so the only explanation left,  which is pure speculation,  is this man had friends in high places whose income and profits were going to be affected by his arrest and incarceration.  Thus he got released to save others from exposure.  We will see. But in any case our judicial system is bass ackwards.  The guilty, if part of the elite, don't even get arrested for blatant crimes,   and the average citizen/middle class voter,  is now going to jail for what used to be civil offenses handled by civil courts.   It tells us volumes about whether we truly live in free country now. 

Court rejects govt. use of GPS tracking
Reverse sentence of accused drug-ring master
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/6/court-rejects-govt-use-gps-tracking/print/

By Jim McElhatton

Ruling that federal agents erred in attaching a satellite tracking device to a vehicle without a search warrant, a federal appeals court Friday reversed the life sentence of man accused of running a major Washington drug ring.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District found that the government's use of GPS technology to track the defendant Antoine Jones's Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment.