Jury Acquits Citizens of Illegally Filming Police

sexybomber writes "The Springfield (MA) Republican reports two men accused of illegally filming the process as they bailed friends out of jail that last summer, were acquitted of all charges Tuesday. Pete Eyre and Adam Mueller initially were granted permission to film the bail process, but later were forbidden by jail officials from recording the procedure. When they continued to digitally recording their encounter with jail officials, they were arrested by police. Eyre and Mueller testified that they never attempted to hide the fact that they were recording at the jail. Not only did they ask permission to film the bail-out process — which initially was granted — but their recording devices were 'out in the open,' Eyre said. The Jury found the defendants not guilty of three criminal counts: Each was acquitted of unlawful wiretapping, while Mueller also was acquitted of a charge of resisting arrest."

Comments

Fully Informed Jury Association

[Anonymous Coward]

fija.org

The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by government.

The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict.

FIJA Works To:

Inform potential jurors of their traditional, legal authority to refuse to enforce corrupt laws;

Inform potential jurors that they cannot be required to check their conscience at the courthouse door;

Inform potential jurors that they cannot be punished for their verdict;

Inform everyone that juror veto—juror nullification—is a peaceful way to protect human rights against corrupt politicians and government tyranny.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[ericartman]

jury nullification---its a good thing
BTW the last time I was being questioned for service on a jury I asked the judge about it and I was dismissed and thanked for my time. I have yet to be called for jury duty again.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[D'Sphitz]

jury nullification---its a good thing

Would this also apply to, say, an all white jury acquitting a KKK member of bombing a church and killing 4 young black girls?

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and I'll explain why. The same all white jury would not acquit a Black Panther member who bombed a church killing 4 young white girls.

The issue is that the jury needs to be opposed to the law in general, not it's application in a specific case.

Meaning, only if you truly believed that bombing and murder should be LEGAL FOR EVERYONE should you vote to acquit.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[fyngyrz]

Wrong on all counts. First of all, jury nullification only requires one juror. Second, that juror can vote their conscience, regardless of what drives it, and can indeed cause a failure to convict, even when the entire world might (perhaps quite rightly) think otherwise. Third, there's no "should" about how the jury nullification power is, or can be, used. It's not specifically about legality, it's not specifically about innocence, it's not specifically about appropriateness or exceptional circumstances. It's simply about one or more juror's unwillingness to convict, period, end of story.

The only counter forces to this are (1) the other jurors and their arguments, and (2) the court's continuing attempts to hide the jury nullification power from jurors, to the extent that if it is even brought up, they'll typically declare a mistrial -- and that's a tool other jurors can use against someone who is attempting jury nullification; simply bring it up when the jury files back into the courtroom. Bang: end of trial, and they'll select a new jury.

Also, just as an aside, for the person who is intending, for whatever reason, to attempt to use jury nullification, a strategy that may avoid the above countermove is not to mention nullification at all, but simply to insist that you cannot in good conscience convict.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[Moryath]

Yeah. This was more a case of "You idiot prosecutor, the law you charged them under has nothing to do with this case and is completely inapplicable. Oh, and by the way, we don't agree with the trumped-up 'resisting arrest' bullshit you tried to tag on either."

From comparison of experiences of numerous acquiantances, friends, co-workers, and family who have ever dealt with police, "resisting arrest" is a bullshit charge they throw in just to punish people for bothering to assert their right to trial instead of plea-bargaining guilty.

The plea bargain system is about forcing the innocent to plead guilty, nothing else.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[Ixokai]

I think you're confused about what "jury nullification" means. It is not the right of a single juror to decide not to vote to convict -- it is when a jury reaches a verdict that is contrary to the law. Thus, by definition, it has to be all 12 people -- otherwise there is no verdict. Jury nullification is not a mistrial, its not a hung jury.

The law says "this act is a crime"; the judge interprets and applies the law (including determining if the law is valid or not, and such), and the jury then determines the *facts* of the case -- they determine what is true and not true, evaluating evidence and deciding what did, or did not, happen. Then they use those facts to determine if the law was violated or not: but the law is the law. They aren't (in general) supposed to determine if the law itself is invalid, if the act itself shouldn't really be a crime or not, or what not.

Jury nullification isn't about a juror voting their conscience, or failure to convict -- jury nullification is about the jury looking at the facts, deciding that the person did do the thing, and voting not guilty *anyways*, thus... (especially if it becomes a pattern) nullifying the law itself, as it applies to that case at least.

Yes, its a power juries have innately, by being... juries, and there's nothing you can do to take away the power, really. But its not, in general, SUPPOSED to be their part of the job to counter and nullify law. That's what the legislature and the judicial branches are supposed to do. Juries are the triers of fact, not law.

Jury nullification can be used for good or ill. You can have them vote not-guilty in some tragic one-off case where despite the law, in the interests of justice and their conscience, they can't convict someone due to extenuating circumstances. Or, a community can decide that killing black people is A-OK, and in effect essentially nullify the law against murder so that it only says "thou shalt not kill white people".

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[fyngyrz]

Here's the thing. I *had* great-great grandparents; because I'm here. That's how we get here. So we can establish the validity right up front that such great great folks definitely existed. The storybook Jesus had no offspring, so that line of evidence is closed.

Next, I never claimed that my grandparents were magical creatures, able to convert water into wine, walk on water, etc. So we can assume we're looking for normal people, which we also have evidence existed.

Next, odds are pretty good that we can find others talking about my great greats, people who actually knew them. This is because (a) they absolutely did exist, and (b) they were moderately well known individuals. In fact, as it turns out, I have reams of this stuff (I maintain the genealogy for my family, so it's actually in my hands.) I've even got my great-great's state department paperwork. Awesome stuff. No crushing of citizen's rights at the border for them, no sir. But that's another lament.

Jesus, a miracle working dude of magical incarnation, existence, actions and exeunt... you could hardly be more stand-out in a crowd... well, as it turns out no one -- NO ONE -- from his time even noticed him enough to write down "cured a leper." That all came later. As the evidence to date indicates, anyway. Doesn't that strike you as... at least curious? Magic dude inspires NO reaction? And then there's the story, which indicates the opposite: he made quite a splash, according to the gospels. Something seems definitely wrong here.

Now let's consider: we know that there have been exactly zero instances of miracles or magic demonstrated under reasonable test conditions. So we tend to treat reports of them as imaginary, at least if we're smart. Now, we find a story about Some Magical Dude in a book that is stuffed with stories about miracles and magic. There's no other evidence that didn't essentially come from the same place as the book: The Christian cultists.

Now why, I ask you, should we give any more credence to these cultists than we do, for instance, to those who told us of Zeus and so forth? Using the same standards (that is, if the story is magical, it's nonsense), all supernatural issues are discarded. And as Jesus was very much a supernatural portion of the Christian narrative, he goes first, UNLESS we can find contemporaneous evidence that confirms his existence through other means. Reports by people who were born after him don't count; we want reports from his contemporaries. Even a receipt, for instance "cross, nails, spear, crown of thorns, crime: annoyed the heck out of ol' Pontius, name: Hayzuess of Nazereth" would be of great interest. But there is nothing at all. When we have contemporaneous evidence, we accept that part of the story has some relationship to reality; for instance, we know from many sources that there were Romans; the story contains Romans; there is a relationship there. What it is is something we can talk about, but we agree there is such a relationship of some kind.

Or, as was put most eloquently: Extraordinary events require extraordinary proof. My great-great-grandparents, lovely though they were, were not extraordinary. Jesus, however, is said to be so by the story. Consequently, our standards for proving he existed must be similar. Yet he fails even the most basic tests for existence: he left no mark on his contemporaries. So we don't, in fact, know he existed.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[fyngyrz]

Haven't citizens already passed judgment on a law in the very process of creating it?

Not in the USA. The citizenry have nothing to do with crafting the law here. That's done by legislators, pre-selected by the political party machines, where both said political machines and legislators work for lobbyists, who in turn represent special interest groups such as "Drill, baby, Drill", "Zygotes Are People Too", "OMFG homos!, LLC" and the hon. Rev. Dumbkopf, Holy Leader of "Mythology Should Control Sexuality." In the process, they typically ignore their solemn oaths to obey and defend the constitution that authorizes them to even have jobs making law which is required to conform to the constitution; even above and beyond that, they don't think the process through and almost uniformly create waves of unintended consequences (prohibition is the poster child for that one, not by any means alone but certainly one of the most high-profile foulups our government has ever entered into); and they hardly ever go back and fix anything they've broken. Even when it harms the living heck out of said citizens, obviously, publicly, and with great regularity.

Basically, it's a madhouse. Our legal system sucks rocks, doesn't address fairness or justice worth a darn, and is not uncommonly completely unauthorized to our form of government. Also, it is basically a form of institutionalized corporate fellatio. So those of us who are actually paying attention tend to be very grateful for the opportunity to redress a few of the government's many, many wrongs with low-level tools like jury nullification.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[Anonymous Coward]

Juries are the triers of fact, not law.

"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."
John Jay Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794 first Chief Justice of the United States.

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[bgoldimho]

Substantially incomplete response. Jury nullification originated in England, the 'founder' of our Common Law. Juries did not want children stealing bread to eat (read:to not starve to death) to be convicted of a capital crime and be executed. Eventually that society (and ours) learned we don't execute children for theft, then extended to adults; we don't cut off hands or arms for theft either. It's (also) a check and balance where a prosecutor can 'get a jury to indict a ham sandwich'. /UNRELATED RANT so i dont want to post as AC so wrongly programmed Slashdot doesnt retain the RSS link after I (re-) register. Can go to main Slashdot but that sets off my No-Script. had to kill page then click on RSS again (not as easy since all marked as Read) and fortunately I stayed login. FAIL, Slashdot programmers/ sw. /end unrelated rant

Re:Fully Informed Jury Association

[VoidCrow]

Please don't breed. It'll make Darwin cry.

Not justice

[Hatta]

There won't be justice until we can hold the people who arrested and tried these men accountable.

Re:Not justice

[Nittle]

The DA should have dropped these charges.

Re:Not justice

[MobyDisk]

Hatta didn't say anything was wrong with the trial. Just like you said, "the arrest is where the problem was" so the next step is to sue the police department for the arrest, and hopefully get compensation for the jail time and legal fees. An acquittal doesn't stop the police from abusing their power the very next time this happens. And the judge should inform the police that they cannot refuse to allow the filming at all, should they choose to do so next time.

Re:Not justice

[sjames]

There is plenty of reason to hold a good many people accountable. The police for making the unjustifiable arrest, the DA for pressing forward with criminal charges in spite of the obvious injustice, and the JUDGE for not sanctioning the DA.

Judges have the authority AND the responsibility to throw a trial out early if it cannot succeed as a matter of law. That is, if the facts as laid out by the DA cannot support a criminal charge, that charge should be thrown out on the spot. They also have a responsibility to sanction a DA who brings charges that cannot be justified by the facts.

Most particularly, it is the judge's responsibility to make sure that the court does not become a crude bludgeon used as a punishment against those who annoy the police and the DA.

As far as relative guilt goes, the judge should probably get off with a reminder of those important responsibilities. The DA and police should face more significant sanctions.

Another victory for Cop Block

[osgeek]

Cop Block is a brilliant resource for those wanting information on abusive state practices.

As always, government needs to be on a short leash. Give these folks too much power and they'll abuse it time and time again.

To become second?

[tepples]

Traditionally, it goes soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. But with powerful media corporations corrupting the electoral process by choosing which issues and which candidates for public office to play up and which to play down on national TV news, should the jury box be moved in front of the ballot box now?

Re:To become second?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Traditionally, it goes soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box.

We're in that awkward stage where it's too late to vote them out but too early to shoot them

Re:To become second?

[fyngyrz]

Powerful corporations can only corrupt the electoral process only so far as the voters allow themselves to be corrupted.

So, you're saying 100%, then? I mean, disregarding for the moment that the voters only have choices from Democrats and Republicans, which someone once quite conservatively characterized as a choice between a shit sandwich and a turdburger... so once we get someone out and replace them, the replacement, being a member of one of the two parties that have put us in our present, seriously screwed up situation, is virtually guaranteed to continue in the same vein.

Also disregarding that a great deal of the process that screws with the citizens isn't electoral, but buried in the appointments process, and therefore out of reach -- we can't do anything about the supreme court judges who in case after case violate their solemn oaths, for instance, nor do we have any effective control over the FCC's preventing any significant use of the RF spectrum by the people, reserving that for corporations exclusively (speaking as an EE with extra class ARO and (now) general commercial licenses, btw.) The list goes on -- a great deal of the governance we receive (right after we're instructed to bend over) comes from non-elected sources.

Re:To become second?

[fyngyrz]

As a licensed amateur myself, I'm curious what you would envision as a "significant use of the RF spectrum by the people".

Low power (community level), local AM and/or FM and/or television broadcast stations. RF networking. All unregulated except for signal quality and channelization. Those are the ones that we would benefit most directly from, at least as far as I've given it thought.

My guess is that any move to "open" the spectrum to the lay public would result in something like 4chan without the good manners and taste. :-)

I don't disagree, but it would *also* open the spectrum to the occasional citizen with valuable content to offer, and therefore give others a chance to hear what they have to say, as opposed to the corporate/government combined viewpoint. As long as basic channelization is maintained, individual signals would be discernable, and so one could browse and choose as one saw fit.

I'm no big fan of the FCC, but the RF spectrum is too valuable to be ruined by a tragedy of the commons. It needs supervision and oversight, or it becomes worthless to everyone.

I see that as disingenuous. As a ham, in fact particularly as a ham -- you should know full well that giving a bit of spectrum to the public, using type-approved gear, won't cause the rest of it to become unusable or decrease its social value or otherwise cause any significant spectrum related trouble at all.

For instance, hand off 10% of the AM, FM, and television bands for local, low power use, and now... what "tragedy" occurs? Corporations have a little less ground to try and sell us Gold Coins, Coast to Coast has a little less spectrum to tell us about Ghosts and UFOs and Hollow Earth, and television has a little less spectrum to pour evangelistic Christianity and "reality" shows down our throats. I don't see it as a potential tragedy; I see it as a glorious victory for the common man, and a step up the ladder of civilization.

There are over 100 usable broadcast channels in the US between 540 and 1700 KHz; Assigning ten of them for local use would result, I think, in a most interesting burst of self-expression from the public. A lot of it would be trash, of course, but -- just for instance -- one might encounter a well spoken atheist, or a libertarian, or a socialist, or a communist -- all people we *never* get to hear from or talk to within the confines of the corporate/government controlled airwaves. And that's not even counting what could happen with similar allocations of FM and television channels.

I think it is important to consider that free expression is valuable, and it is also important that note that we have very little of it, when you get right down to it, as far as the airwaves go.

And as for RF networking... right now, corporations have engineered a government sponsored monopoly. I'd like to see that end, straight up. I think it's disgusting, at best.