From: delisle@eskimo.celestial.com (Ben Delisle)
Subject: Fully Informed Jury Association (Pamphlet)
Followup-To: misc.legal
Summary: This was a handout that someone gave me on the FIJA orgnization.
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 21:14:28 GMT
X-Reply-To-For-More-Information: phone 1-406-793-5550 1-800-444-FIJA

    ----> This is copied from a pamphlet that I was given. <----
          Please forgive any bad typing.

                  --   *   --
      Fully Informed Jury Association

                    True
                     Or
                   False?

     When You sit on a jury, You have the right to vote 
your conscience. 

TRUE...  "BUT"...
It's extremely unlikely the judge will tell you this,
because in most states the law dosen't require 
that you be fully informed of your rights as a juror.

Instead, expect the judge to tell you that you may 
consider "only the facts" of the case and may not
let your conscience, your opinion of the law, or the 
defendant's motives affect your decision.

HOW CAN ANYONE GET A FAIR TRIAL 
IF THE JURORS ARE TOLD THEIR SENSE
OF JUSTICE DOSEN'T COUNT?

A lot of people don't get fair trials. Far too often,
jurors actually end up apologizing to the person 
they've convicted!

Something is obviously wrong when jurors cry and 
the defendant after conviction, saying "We 
didn't WANT to find you guilty, but the judge said
we HAD to convict you if the evidence showed you
broke the law as it was explained to us."

Most Americans are aware of their right to trial by
jury, but how many know that *the jury has more power 
than anyone else in the courtroom?*

In pursuit of a just verdict, jurors are free to judge
the merits of the law itself, its use in the case at 
hand, or the motives of the accused.

If jurors were supposed to judge "only the facts",
their job could be done by a computer. It is precisely
because people have feelings, opinions, wisdom, 
experience, and consciences that we depend upon
jurors, not machines, to judge court cases.

WHY DON'T JUDGES TELL JURIES THEIR
FULL RANGE OF RIGHTS?

Today's judges generally don't appear to want
ordinary citizens to make common-sense decisions 
about the law. Judges seem to have forgotten that
they are supposed to serve merely as referees in 
disputes that are taken to court, and as neutral
legal advisors to the jury.

We can only speculate on why: Disrespect for the
vital concept of "government of, by, and for the 
people?" Unwillingness to part with their power?
Ignorance of jurors rights? (Yes, some judges do 
not even know about the rights of jurors.)

Anyway, when ever a judge tells trial jurors they
"may not" let their conscience, opinion of the law,
or the defendant's motives influenc their verdict,
that judge is not telling the truth.

Nor are judges supposed to dismiss prospective
jurors because they have qualms about the law, or
know about their right to judge the law and its 
application. But such dismissals are routine.

Worse, many judges and prosecutors, apparently
anxious to reassure the public that they stand for
law and order, to do their best to select jurors they
know from previous experience to be "conviction 
prone". Then the judge (wrongly) instructs them 
that they must reach a unanimous decision and soon,
to avoid  "overburdening the taxpayers."

No one (expect FIJA) informs jurors that they may vote 
their conscience, even if sworn to "apply the law
as given" --or that it's okay for juries to "hang" if,
for any reason, agreement cannot be reached.

WHAT IS "FIJA"?

FIJA stands for Fully Informed Jury Association.
We are a nationwide network of jury-rights activists
and groups. Out current project is also known as 
"FIJA", the Fully Informed Jury Act or Amendment.

As law, FIJA would require that trial judges resume 
the former practice of telling jurors about their right
to judge both the law and the fact regarding each and
every charge against a defendant. We want the judge, 
like everyone else in the courtroom, to tell the who 
truth and nothing but.

RESUME THE FORMER PRACTICE? DID JUDGES FULLY INFORM 
JURORS IN TIMES PAST?

Yes, it was standard procedure in the early days of 
our nation and before, in colonial times. America's
Founders knew that trials by juries of ordinary
people, fully aware of their rights as jurors, would
be essential to preservation of our freedom: as
long as juries had the final say on the laws of the 
land, the government would remain the servant, not
the master of the people.

Out third president, Thomas Jefferson, put it like
this: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet
imagined by man which a government can be held to the 
principles of its constitution."

John Adams, our second president, had this to say
about juror: "It is not only his right, but his duty...to
find the verdict according to his own best understanding,
judgement, and conscience, through in direct opposition to
the direction of the court."

FIJA's overall goal is to rescue America's heritage
of personal freedom and responsibility by reviving 
both the jury instructions and the understanding of 
"trial by jury" in effect when our nation was born.

WHATEVER BECAME OF THE RIGHT OF JURIES TO JUDGE THE LAW?

During the late 1800's, powerful special-interest
pressure inspired a series of judicial decisions
which sought to limit this right. While no court,
then or now, has decides that jurors do not have the 
power to acquit despite the law or the facts,
there are decisions holding that jurors needn't be
told they have this power.

Known as "jury nullification of law", or "jury veto
power", it's now a rare and courageous attorney who 
will risk being cited for contempt for telling the
jury about it without the judge's prior approval.

Still the jury's power to reject bad law continues to 
be reconized, as in 1972 when the D.C. Circuit
Court of Appeals held that the jury has an 
"...unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in
disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial
judge. The pages of history shine upon the instances of the 
jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions
of the judge: for example, acquittals under the fugitive 
slave law."

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN FIJA BECOMES LAW?

Three good things: (1) Individuals will have a
better chance of obtaining justice from the justice
system, because juries will understand that their 
job is not merely to decide the facts of the case,
but to reach a just verdict;

(2) Legislators will have access to regular feedback
from ordinary people, sitting on juries, instead of
mainly from special-interest groups and other very
political sources. This information will allow them to 
better represent the will of the people; and
 
(3) When the laws of the land respect the will of 
the people, as revealed by their jury verdicts, the
people, in turn, will show more respect for the law.

SOUNDS GOOD! WHERE IS THE "FIJA ACTION" RIGHT NOW?

There are a number of current, exciting fronts:
FIJA legislation is being pursued in some states,
while in others, the effort is to put FIJA on the
ballot as a  citizen initiative.

Since our primary goal is to make sure that all
Americans are informed of their rights as jurors,
whether or not laws are ever passed requiring the 
judge to tell them, one of FIJA's most important
and popular efforts is grass roots distribution of
educational materials (like this brochure), and we
also do newspaper, radio and tv advertising.

On September 5, 1991, we held our first annual 
nationwide celebration of "Jury Rights Day". It
honors the protection afforded to our right to 
trial by jury via the 5th 6th and 7th amendments to the
U.S. Constitution, 200 years after the inclusion in that
document as part of the Bill of Rights - and back when the
word "jury" meant a fully informed jury.

Indeed, every day is "Jury Rights Day", because 
people go on trial every day, throughout America.
Also every day, the power of the jury of the jury is being
eroded, mostly by subtle changes in the rules of 
court procedure, or by the creation of creation types of law
which do not entail jury trials for the accused.

We believe the remedy is for Americans to get
actively involved in re-establishing the jury as the 
final check and balance upon our government.
We also believe the best first step is to inform the
American people that when serving as jurors, they 
have a right and a responsibility to consult their
consciences when deciding a defendant's fate.

IF YOU AGREE, LET'S HEAR FROM YOU!

There is much to do, and time is short. Far to
many Americans have been convicted by juries which 
would have acquitted if only they had been informed 
of their right to decide on the verdict according to 
conscience, with the result that the United States 
now leads the entire world in the percentage of its
population behind bars!

More prisons are being built than ever before, and
they will be filled mostly with people whose only
crime was to displease the government "master",
not to victimize anyone.

   (picture here with caption)
      
     THE LAW
                     JUSTICE
    JUSTICE BY JURY -
      WHEN THE LAW IS WRONG
    -----
YOU CAN HELP! just phone or write Don Doig or Larry Dodge 
at FIJA National HQ, P.O. Box 59, Helmville, MT 59843; 
(406)-793-5550. Or contact your local FIJA-supportive organization.
For a breif recorded message on FIJA, plus an opportunity to tell us
who and where you are, so we can mail you more information, call the 
FIJA toll-free hotline: 1-800-444-FIJA! If You're already so supportive
our goal that you want to make a contribution, phone our special fund
rasing number : 1-900-678-FIJA! Many thanks for either or both calls!

   ---- ----- ----- ----- END ----- ----- ----- ----- ----

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive