Is This Any Way To Run A Jury? - Softcover

Godfrey D. Lehman

9781930916531: Is This Any Way To Run A Jury?

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1930916531 ISBN 13: 9781930916531

Publisher: Virtual Pub Group Inc, 2001

It's not always easy to get before a jury, and only a small percentage of all trials do reach juries, but those that do are influential. The jury has an immediate impact. When the jury acts, the government complies at once. Deciding the facts in a dispute is important of course, because that's ostensibly what's asked of them. But while deciding the facts, the jury must really decide if the law or laws involved make good public policy - which means the jury is free to ignore the written law as if it did not exist - in other words, to "nullify" it.

This is based on the doctrine that the people in the American republic (the Constitution does not use the word "democracy") are sovereigns and "All power is inherent in the people!" All power! The jury is composed of a representative group of equal sovereigns - intended to be large enough to be diverse, but small enough to be operable, and as sovereigns, they retain, inherently, all power.

Jurors rarely know this, which permits judges to turn them into pawns. Judges like it when jurors are docile. It may look like a jury, but it doesn't smell like a jury, it doesn't talk like a jury, so it's not a jury at all. But if the panel is able to rise up and act on conscience in the face of bad laws, it turns itself into a jury, and forces the government to hang its head.

I have given this book the title of "Is This Any Way to Run a Jury?" because it challenges the corruptive practices in almost every court room in the land. It challenges the condescending attitude shown toward jurors by judges who would treat them at best as juveniles. And it promotes the basic Constitutional philosophy that the power of sovereignty resides collectively and individually in the juries who are the people.

But to declare the people "sovereign" means nothing unless we, the people, implement that declaration.

Thus I dedicate this book to freedom and to you in your role as juror and guarantor of freedom.

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About the Author:

Godfrey D. Lehman the author of "What You Need To Know For Jury Duty," and the "Ordeal of Edward Bushell," has published numerous articles on jurors' rights in the "Lincoln Law Review," "American Heritage," "Liberty" and other periodicals. He is also a lecturer and has appeared on television and radio as an expert on the history and application of the jury system in America. He is a charter member of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA).

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