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2018 May 18
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[N]o American should retreat an inch on the right of jurors to acquit
if they perceive the law or its administration to be unjust. |
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"The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided." |
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2018 May 17
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"The jury in all criminal cases,
shall be the judges of the law and the facts." |
"In all criminal cases whatsoever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts." |
"...and in all cases of libels, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases." |
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2018 May 15
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"What is the fairest fruit of the English Tree of Liberty? The security of our rights and of the law, and that no man shall be brought to trial where there is a prejudice against him." |
"Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found “against the evidence,” ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law." |
"It is left, therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges, and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty." |
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2018 May 14
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"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world;
and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding
twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read." |
"For more than six hundred years -- that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating or resisting the execution of such laws." |
"A juror who is forced by the judge’s instructions to convict a defendant whose conduct he applauds or at the least feels is justifiable, will lose respect for the legal system. . . . A juror compelled to decide against his own judgment will rebel at the system that made him a traitor to himself." |
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