Source: http://committeefortheconstitution.org/?author=4&paged=2
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 06:23:06+00:00

Document:
Unlike many societies and cultures in this age whose political organizations still unjustly hold the tolerant and those lacking political power in involuntary servitude, America freed itself from slavery imposed and sustained by force by the end of the great Civil War. Motivated by a Great Awakening in the 1730s to the awareness that “all men are created equal . . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, its citizens’ blood and sacrifices loosed the political bonds forcing others to do the will of those holding the reins of power. In the Revolutionary War, one third of the colonists defeated the tyranny of the mightiest army and navy of their time with no standing army or navy and no united military organization. “Relying on divine Providence”, less than one hundred years later soldiers of a different generation “marching on”, removed the shackles on our brothers and sisters placed by our own government.
With one third of the Union army consisting of freed slaves, brother fighting brother, approximately 625,000 American lives were lost in a conflict that the Framers envisioned would not occur. As spelled out in the Constitution, by 1808, they expected the states to voluntarily abolish slavery. Arising from the devastation and carnage, though free under the rule of law, Americans began to reject the Law that truly sets mankind free. Experiencing the unconscionable extremes of sacrifice and suffering on both sides, then as now, humanity questioned the immutable Law that is always good and just. Offering an untruth setting the stage for the rejection of ultimate Truth, in November of 1859, forgotten until after the war, the very foundation of Law establishing equality and justice for all was brought into question. A concept negating even “unalienable Rights”, challenging even creation, was put forth by human invention and imagination. Accepting false science and corrupted invalid history, mankind will always be enslaved by untruth when choosing to move beyondreason.
As always, throughout history, always portraying animate behavior, humanity chooses to satisfy pleasure and avoid pain and sacrifice. Unfortunately, reality requires work or sacrifice in some form or degree to sustain existence in the indelible interactions with the natural order. Individually, we are enslaved by our addictions and lack of discipline. Similarly, human failures are always the cause of failed relationships. Magnified by joining with others in common unjust economic purpose, wars, economic disasters, and political unrest and discord follow us as we move through time and circumstance.
Now Truth and Justice are embroiled in a great new civil war. This is a war of ideologies. Only by holding to Truth revealed by the inviolate method of science and uncompromised history can the lies, deceptions, partial truths, and untruths robbing us of true freedom be defeated. True freedom is defined by God – the Creator’s intention.
For America, this midterm election is a crossroads of freedom. On every front, from energy, to healthcare, to domestic and foreign policy, to immigration, to protecting our borders, to social security, political candidates seeking to rob us of our freedoms spew smokescreens and erect mirrors aided by the false propaganda of a media also deceived by what they want to believe.
Asking voters to ignore platforms and voting records, our enemies destroy our order of law by perjury, rejecting the foundational premise that all are innocent until proven guilty, and advocating double standards shouting inequality. Economic failures condemned and rejected by history such as socialism are reintroduced to a generation whose worldview is corrupted and perverted by educators given academic authority unconstrained by truth and justice. Those choosing to ignore the lessons of history are bribed for their vote. Three hundred years of energy reserves found in coal are ignored and rejected by politicians in the congregations of false science costing thousands of jobs. Global warming unalterable by human intervention or invention, subjugates American jobs to foreign competition and the economic interests of unbridled capitalism. Character assassination of a president whose miraculous election has resulted only in fulfilled promises made in his campaign is constant. Ridiculous ungrounded unfounded prejudiced diatribes of the rich and famous choosing to believe their own lies and deceptions constantly emanate from the media. Politicians selling national security secrets to our enemies and otherwise compromising our national security, in ways where others committing the same treason are imprisoned, go unprosecuted. Most telling is that this is just a small part of huge list of government failures brought about by we, the people, failing in our responsibility to elect members of Congress loyal to the original intention of the Constitution and hold them accountable to their oath of office. Do not forget the unrestrained tyranny of the administrative state, and the cost the “swamp” extracts from every American’s “pursuit of Happiness”. Do not forget the tyranny of judicial activism advocated by those opposing the confirmation of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Do not forget Benghazi, and all those who died for our freedom now taken fore granted.
America is under attack! Freedom is never free. “[I]t is [our] right, it is [our] duty to” elect only those loyal to the original intention of the Constitution to represent us, and to remove those who do not. In the Framers’ and Founders’ “supreme” order of law, truth and justice are not defined by humanity. They are not a choice.
Do any of you still question whether America is under attack? This an ideologic civil war raging around the world. Only Truth shall set us free!
Before framing the Constitution, the Framers studied history for 500 years before Christ. Fearful of the public majority, they deliberated in secret with windows closed and the doors locked despite the sweltering summer heat in 1787. Their purpose was to identify the repetitive political failures that lead to the demise of political organizations, particularly governments. Successfully defining those elements required of successful and enduring governments using valid uncorrupted history as their guide, they created an order of law giving structure to the new government. This was a new experiment in freedom and justice for all.
Critical to all relationships of every size and composition, this “supreme law of the land” was binding on all parties. Further, because the intention of the makers of the law must be upheld for any organization to succeed, they established a due process by which any deviation from that original intention must be accomplished. Amendment of the Constitution required ratification by three fourths of the states. Similarly, always fearful of the public majority and intending to limit government, they instituted checks and balances on the structures of government, and the Electoral College.
The attack on America has been prosecuted by those violating the original intention of the Constitution. Proceeding because voters have not held those they elect to their oath of office to “protect and defend this Constitution” from “enemies, foreign and domestic”, every branch of government has displayed some injustice.
Recently, a doctrine of law that is foundational to the judicial process was violated by the legislative branch. That doctrine demands that all are innocent until proven guilty. Using character assassination, guilt by association, double standards, blatant lies and deceptions, and other means that are so despicable that the Framers and Founders never even considered addressing them, some members of Congress attack the Constitution itself. Without any valid evidence acceptable to any court of law, due process according to the Constitution is trashed.
This attack on America stands beside the failure of the Senate to uphold truth as the prime requisite determining and establishing justice.
This principle – that all individuals are presumed innocent until validly convicted in a court of law – is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” such that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if [it was] sacrificed.”4 The origins of the presumption go well beyond our own Anglo-American legal system, stretching back to Roman antiquity and beyond to the Old Testament. Infra pp. 6-7. The presumption was central to the English common law, including the writings of Sir William Blackstone. Infra p. 8. And disregard for the presumption of innocence was one of the motivating factors behind the Declaration of Independence at the time of this nation’s birth. Infra pp. 9-10. Moreover, the presumption of innocence has never been limited to criminal cases but extends through all the law. Infra pp. 11-14. Unsurprisingly, given that pedigree, the presumption of innocence has been repeatedly reaffirmed by this Court. Infra pp. 15-17.
The Presumption of Innocence Is Deeply Rooted in Our Nation’s History and Tradition, Such That It Is Implicit in the Concept of Ordered Liberty.
The presumption of innocence is such a foundational principle – so suffusing every aspect of our legal system – that it is perhaps at risk of being taken for granted. This brief thus begins by tracing the origins of that principle, its extension beyond the requirement that criminal charges be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and its repeated application by the decisions of this Court.
The Presumption of Innocence Has Deep Historical Roots.
The presumption of innocence has been called “a general principle of our political morality,”7 “a guardian angel,”8 the “cornerstone of Anglo-Saxon justice,”9 “a touchstone of American criminal jurisprudence,”10 “the golden thread that runs throughout the criminal law,”11 and the “focal point of any concept of due process.”12 This basic principle traces its roots far past our nation’s Founding, through English common law to writings from antiquity and even the Old Testament.
“The most onerous provisions”28 of the Acts required merchants whose vessels were seized for alleged customs violations to bear the burden of proving that they were not guilty.29 Thus, one grievance leading to the American Revolution was the Crown’s disregard for the presumption of innocence – a feature shared with Colorado’s scheme here.
Id. at 336 (quoting John Adams, Admiralty Notebook, in micro- films of the Papers of John Adams, pt. III, reel 184).
The Presumption of Innocence Is Integral to the Concept of Justice and Due Process of Law.
The presumption of innocence is more than a simple evidentiary presumption, and instead reflects a long-standing societal judgment about the degree of legal process that is required to strip an individual of liberty and property. The presumption is a “shorthand description of the right of the accused to remain inactive and secure, until the prosecution has taken up its burden.”31 It “takes possession of this fact, innocence, as not now needing evidence, as already established prima facie.”32 In other words, the presumption does not depend on a judgment that an individual is in fact more likely innocent than guilty; indeed, as a factual matter, it might be more reasonable to assume that anyone who has been arrested and indicted is more likely guilty than not.33 Instead, the presumption stands for the basic proposition that a person can be deprived of rights to liberty or property only following a valid conviction by a court of law.
In other words, the presumption of innocence is intrinsic to the very idea of a rational and orderly justice system. The presumption marks the divide between a world where individuals can be subjected to arbitrary and irrational deprivations of their liberty and property – forced to win back their rights through an affirmative showing of innocence – and a world where rights can be infringed only following a valid legal judgment of guilt.
In other words, the presumption of innocence applies broadly beyond criminal cases and is integral to due process of law.
This Court Has Consistently Recognized That the Presumption of Innocence Is Constitutionally Required.
2 Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 454 (1895).
3 McFarland v. Am. Sugar Ref. Co., 241 U.S. 79, 86 (1916) (Holmes, J.), cited with approval by Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S.197, 209 (1977).
4 Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997) (quoting Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325-26 (1937)).
7 William S. Laufer, The Rhetoric of Innocence, 70 Wash. L. Rev. 329, 338 (1995) (quoting William Twining, Rethinking Evidence: Exploratory Essays 208 (1990)).
8 Laufer, supra, at 338 (quoting James Bradley Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law 553 (1898)).
9 Laufer, supra, at 338 (quoting Henry J. Abraham, The Judicial Process 96 (1993)).
10 Laufer, supra, at 338 (quoting People v. Layhew, 548 N.E..2d 25, 27 (Ill. App. Ct. 1989)).
11 Scott E. Sundby, The Reasonable Doubt Rule and the Meaning of Innocence, 40 Hastings L. J. 457, 457 (1988-1989) (citations omitted) (quoting Rupert Cross, The Golden Thread of the English Criminal Law: The Burden of Proof 2 (1976)).
12 Sundby, supra, at 457 (quoting Sandra Hertzberg & Carmela Zammuto, The Protection of Human Rights in the Criminal Process Under International Instruments and National Constitutions 16 (1981)).
13 See Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 454 (1895) (citing Simon Greenleaf, III, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence § 29, at 31 n.1 (Edmund H. Bennett & Chauncey Smith, eds., 1853) (tracing the presumption to Deuteronomy); see also Alexander Volokh, N. Guilty Men, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 173, 173, 178 (1997) (identifying biblical passages loosely related to the presumption of innocence).
15 Deuteronomy 19:15-20; see also Numbers 35:30.
16 James Bradley Thayer, The Presumption of Innocence in Criminal Cases, 6 Yale L. J. 185, 190 (1897).
17 Laufer, supra, at 332 n.14 (citing George P. Fletcher, Rethinking Criminal Law 520 (1978)).
18 Volokh, supra, at 178 (quoting Dig. 48.19.5 (Ulpian, De Officio Proconsulis 7).
19 See Dan Gifford, The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo- American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason, 62 Tenn. L. Rev.759, 761 n.6 (1995) (quoting Respectfully Quoted 183 (Suzy Platt ed., 1992) (quotation from a 1974 translation of the 1749 version of Zadig).
20 In-depth treatments of these developments can be found in Anthony A. Morano, A Reexamination of the Development of the Reasonable Doubt Rule, 55 B.U. L. Rev. 507 (1975); Laufer, supra; Thayer, supra; and Jeff Thaler, Punishing the Innocent: The Need for Due Process and the Presumption of Innocence Prior to Trial, 1978 Wis. L. Rev. 441 (1978).
21 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries, *358 (1765).
22 Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 712 (1997).
23 See Dudley R. Herschbach, Our Founding Grandfather, Harv. Mag., Sept. 2003.
24 Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan (March 14, 1785) in 9 The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 1783-1788, at 293 (Albert H. Smyth ed., 1906).
25 See Declarations and Resolves of the First Continental Congress (Oct. 14, 1774), available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp.
26 See Samuel Adams, Report on the Sugar Act (May 1764), in Theodore Draper, A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution 219 (1996) (“If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?”).
28 Harrington, supra, at 333.
29 For example, Article XLV of the Sugar Act provided: [I]f any ship or goods shall be seized . . . and any dispute shall arise whether the customs and duties for such goods have been paid . . . then, and in such cases, the proof thereof shall lie upon the owner or claimer of such ship or goods, and not upon the officer who shall seize or stop the same; any law, custom, or usage, to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Sugar Act (Apr. 5, 1764) in Prologue to the Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis 1764-1766, at 8 (Edmund S. Morgan ed., 2012).
30 Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 (1997).
31 Taylor v. Kentucky, 436 U.S., 478, 483 n.12 (1978); see also id. (explaining that “the so-called ‘presumption’ is not evidence – not even an inference drawn from a fact in evidence – but instead is a way of describing the prosecution’s duty”); Commonwealth v. Webster, 59 Mass. 295 (1850), abrogated on other grounds by Commonwealth v. Russell, 470 Mass. 464 (2015) (“All the presumptions of law independent of evidence are in favor of innocence, and every person is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty.”) (emphasis added).
32 Thayer, supra, at 199; see also id. (explaining that the presumption of innocence means that, even if a person is “under grave suspicion,” “he is not to suffer in your minds from these suspicions or this necessity of holding him confined and trying him”).
33 See Zechariah Chafee, The Progress of the Law, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 302, 314 (1922) (“There is no probability that a man indicted by a grand jury is usually innocent”); Thayer, supra, at 199 (“[I]f the jury were not thus called off from the field of natural inference, if they were allowed to range there wherever mere reason and human experience would carry them, the whole purpose of the presumption of innocence would be balked. For of the men who are actually brought up for trial, probably the large majority are guilty.”); id. at 188 (the presumption in favor of the defendant is a “maxim of policy and practical sense; it is not founded on any notion the defendants generally are [factually] free from blame.”).
34 Laufer, supra, at 331-32 (emphasis added).
35 Thayer, supra, at 189.
36 See Thayer, at 196; George P. Fletcher, Two Kinds of Legal Rules: A Comparative Study of Burden-of-Persuasion Practices in Criminal Cases, 77 Yale L. J. 880 (1967-1968) (arguing that the presumption of innocence and the requirement of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” are historically and philosophically distinct).
37 See, e.g., Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 526 (1958) (hold- ing, in civil tax-enforcement proceeding, that “[d]ue process commands that no man shall lose his liberty unless the Government has borne the burden of producing the evidence and convincing the factfinder of his guilt”).
38 Thayer, supra, at 189 (quoting 16 Records of Massachusetts, III., 434). See generally P. Thomas, Revolution in America: Britain and the Colonies, 1763-1776 at 67 (1992); David S. Lovejoy, Rights Imply Equality: The Case Against Admiralty Jurisdiction in America, 1764-1776, 16 Wm. & Mary Q. 459 (1959); C. Ubbelohde, The Vice-Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution 126-42, 154-58 (1960).
39 U.S. v. Gooding, 12 Wheat. 460, 471 (1827) (Story, J.). Other decisions suggest that the presumption of innocence has always been part of the American justice system. See, e.g., Hopt v. Utah, 120 U.S. 430, 439 (1887) (approving jury instruction adopted by lower court stating that “the law presumes the defendant innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”); Lilienthal’s Tobacco v. United States, 97 U.S. 237, 266 (1877) (“[I]n criminal trials the party accused is entitled to the legal presumption in favor of innocence, which, in doubtful cases, is always sufficient to turn the scale in his favor.”); see also Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S.790, 802-03 (1952) (“[F]rom the time that the law which we have inherited has emerged from dark and barbaric times, the conception of justice which has dominated our criminal law has refused to put an accused at the hazard of punishment if he fails to re- move every reasonable doubt of his innocence”; rather, it is “the duty of the Government to establish his guilt,” a notion “basic in our law and rightly one of the boasts of a free society [and] a requirement and a safeguard of due process of law”) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting), cited with approval by In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 362 (1970).
40 156 U.S. 432, 453 (1895).
41 397 U.S. 358 (1970).
42 397 U.S. 358, 363 (1970) (observing that the reasonable doubt standard “provides concrete substance for the presumption of innocence”).
43 425 U.S. 501, 503 (1976) (Burger, C.J.).
The Presumption of Innocence above is extracted from the Brief of Amici Curiae by The Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice in Nelson v. Colorado, 581 U. S.15–1256 (2017).

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