United States -(AmmoLand.com)- In 2003 I had only been living in Montana for a couple of years. I helped pitch a Liberty Round Table three-day conclave on a friend’s fifty-acre ranch amid Aspen trees in the scenic Bridger Range between Bozeman and Livingston, Montana.
There I chanced to meet a man who introduced himself to me as the co-founder of FIJA. I asked him what that meant and he asked me if I had heard of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA). I had not, so he began to explain to me what FIJA was all about.
Instantly, I grasped the significance of the FIJA mission and started up a friendship with the man. We found that we had much in common with our world views about liberty and freedom, but that I was a novice when it came to more detailed knowledge about this country’s Judicial Branch of government.
Thirteen years later I’m still very close friends with Don Doig, one of the two founders of FIJA, and thanks to his guidance I am totally sold on the idea of Jury Nullification as one lawful way for the American people to rein-in a berserk government. Jury nullification has a wonderful history marked by major victories over Federal tyranny as well as victories at the State and Local levels as well. You will enjoy learning about those victories in the article I’ve recently posted at Oath Keepers.
Don’t like your State’s or the Fed’s gun laws? Don’t like the tyranny coming out of the so-called “War on Drugs”? Get on a jury and nullify those stupid gun laws and drug laws for the accused/defendant. Set the victim of government over-reach free with a “not-guilty” verdict. It is our right, and it is our duty as citizens to use jury nullification to help keep the ship of state chugging along in the right direction.
After visiting with Don about the entire jury subject for several years, I wrote an article as an open letter to the Judiciary Committee of the Montana State Legislature’s House of Representatives, chaired at that time by the Honorable Diane Rice of Harrison, Montana.
I have dusted off that old article because of Jake Ryan, of Plains, Montana, and more than thirty-five other victims of government abuse — yes, the cowboys who are rotting in jail with no bail for daring to question the illegal idiocy of the BLM, the EPA, and the USFS as those government agencies continue to dominate, persecute, and intrude into the lives of western ranchers, loggers, miners, and farmers.
Sooner or later the victims of this governmental criminality will be brought to some sort of trial, and at that time the citizens of the western States will have the opportunity to set them free, in the clear, and clean of all charges, by simply refusing to convict them no matter what the lying judge says, no matter what the “evidence” says, no matter what the statute or code or ‘color of law‘ or ‘rules of the court‘ say. We have that power, that authority, and that duty as Americans.
That is a fairly radical sounding claim I’ve just made. Can I back it up?
You betcha!
https://www.oathkeepers.org/the-first-branch/
Please click that link to the Oath Keepers national website and give yourself about a half-hour to read carefully this ten-years-old essay I wrote with the help of Don Doig, FIJA, and former Washington State Supreme Court Justice William Goodloe’s little booklet entitled “The Fourth Branch“. All the factual history of jury nullification is right there in one longish article, and this information needs to be spread to every American citizen immediately. So don’t just read it — study it, print copies to pass to friends, email the link to the article to your lists, master the entire concept of Jury Nullification as an Unalienable Right of We The People.
Thank you.
Salute!
Elias Alias, editor
About Oath Keepers:
Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution.
For more information, visit: www.oathkeepers.org.