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Why So Few People Understand the True Role of the Jury?

Since government, any government, in and of itself, has no capacity to admit its laws are wrong; by its very nature, government must enforce its own laws; the jury was invented as a corrective for government and to keep government's powers in check.

It is for this reason alone that we have juries-- to protect our freedom.

The framers of the Constitution guaranteed jury trials in the Sixth Amendment.

Benjamin Franklin said that jury nullification is “better than law, it ought to be law, and will always be law wherever justice prevails.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, that given the choice between the right to vote and the right to have juries (that can nullify laws), he said he preferred juries, since no law can be enforced without a jury's consent.

“The execution of the laws is more important than the making [of] them,” he said.

Alexander Hamilton said of the framers of the constitution, “If they agree on nothing else, (they) concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists of this: the former regard (jury nullification) as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government.”

You might think that, since the jury brought and preserved for us so many of our freedoms, that government would want the role and true purpose of the jury taught to every child in every public school.

I wonder why that does not happen?

 

 

Niagara Falls Reporter - Publisher Frank Parlato Jr. www.niagarafallsreporter.com

JUL 09, 2013