by Elias Alias
USA -(AmmoLand.com)- Jury selection/rejection began Wednesday, September 07, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, for the Bundy trial. I am not surprised to read accounts of the judge’s bias against jury nullification.
The Oregonian/OregonLive website posted an article which quotes a few of judge Anna J. Brown’s opinions about protecting the government’s assumed power to railroad defendants.
A passage from the article:
“Jury selection is something of a misnomer,” said Jeffrey T. Frederick, director of jury research services for the National Legal Research Group. “It really is jury rejection. That’s because the practice is meant as a filter, to keep unqualified people from sitting in judgment,” he said.
Further down the article we read:
Potential jurors will almost certainly face questions on their opinions about federal control of public land, militias, law enforcement, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and whether they believe a person exercising their First or Second Amendment rights must observe lawful limitations on those rights.
That judge has had ample opportunity to learn the truth regarding jury nullification. Her refusal to see that truth robs her soul of dignity and makes of her a robotic agent of government force, indifferent to the spirit of the Constitution, ignorant of Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of “Unalienable Rights”, and repugnant to every principle of individual freedom. She is a willing agent of what we old hippies used to call “The Establishment” or “TheSystem“.
Recall, another judge has already ruled that the Bunkerville, Nevada, trials will be shrouded in secrecy. See my article of July 25, 2016, on that – “My God! The Judge Wants Total Secrecy In Bundy Trial!”
So judge Brown is not the only one willing to defend government’s sins. But she is tying up the hands of justice in her own way by her denial of Jurors’ rights to judge of the law as well as of the facts of the case.
We are looking directly into the face of governmental tyranny unabashedly displaying itself with cold cruelty in a theatrical abomination of the very purpose of “justice“. The infrastructure of power now has its own evil momentum and will lay to waste any dissent, in order to protect the gigantic fraud which the mechanism of government has asserted through “code” and “statute“, through “color of law” and “rules of the court”. States’ Rights be damned; Jury Nullification be damned; it’s full steam ahead for the soul-less, ego-driven hunger of authoritarian power dressed appropriately in the black robes of darkness and death.
Readers may wonder why I speak this way about our corrupt court system, and some may feel that I’m condemning all judges. I am not condemning all judges, just most of them. I am happy to show an example of a true judge who sat on the Washington State Supreme Court and honored his Oath. I’ve written about the man, and his message of jury nullification, many years ago. It is right here on the Oath Keepers website. I would encourage any reader who has not read that article to pause here and do so now. And someone needs to show the article to Judge Brown. The opening of that article –
In a small but powerful booklet which was copyrighted in 1996, former Washington State Supreme Court Justice William Goodloe gives an accounting of the origin and establishment of our present-day jury powers. I would like to share with you some passages from his essay entitled: “Jury Nullification: Empowering The Jury As The Fourth Branch Of Government”
Quoting former Washington State Supreme Court Justice William Goodloe:
Of all the great trials in history tried at Old Bailey in London only one is commemorated by a plaque. Located near Courtroom Number Five it reads:
“Near this site William Penn and William Mead were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street. This tablet commemorates the courage and endurance of the Jury. Thomas Vere, Edward Bushell and ten others, who refused to give a verdict against them although they were locked up without food for two nights and were fined for their final verdict of Not Guilty. The case of these jurymen was reviewed on a writ of Habeas Corpus and Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the court which established the Right of Juries to give their Verdict according to their conviction.”
“The case commemorated is Bushell’s Case, 6 Howell’s State Trials 999 (1670). This case is a good beginning for tracing the roots of a legal doctrine known as jury nullification.” (End quoted passage by Justice William Goodloe, ret.)
Justice Goodloe’s article builds from there, giving context, founders’ commentary on the subject, court cases concluded favorably on jury nullification, and, as his intelligence shown through brilliantly, his booklet shows the proper place for common sense and moral uprightness in the American court system. So the question remains – why do not all judges care enough about their duties, and their Oaths, to educate themselves about our rights as embodied in jury nullification? This judge Brown is positioning herself as the antithesis of what our court system is supposed to be. Here are some passages from the bottom of the OregonLive article linked above.
The judge also said she intends to question each juror on whether they were handed a flier outside court about jury nullification, and to instruct them that they must follow the law even if they disagree with it. Judge Brown said deputy U.S. marshals indicated there may be people outside court distributing such fliers.
Ryan Bundy and Ammon Bundy’s lawyer Marcus Mumford objected to the judge’s proposed instructions to prospective jurors. Ryan Bundy argued that they will “rob a juror” of the right to serve as a “check and balance” on the federal government’s power.
Mumford asked that the judge not suggest that any of the defendants were responsible for such fliers.
“A jury’s place is to be able to use their common sense, their intellect, their conscience, whether the law is proper or not proper,” Ryan Bundy argued.
Judge Brown dismissed his objection.
“It’s overruled,” she responded.
Jurors take oaths, the judge said, and she plans to advise them to “follow the law whether they agree with it or not.”
“I’m not going to say they have the option,” the judge said.
So there we have it. Damn what’s right. Damn the people. Damn the purpose of the law in the first place; and damn moral duty to our fellow man. Damn everything when the authority of Statism might be threatened by the truth.
The cowboys never shot at a cop, never killed an agent, never shot at anyone. Instead, they merely made a conscientious stand to raise the question in public about who Constitutionally is authorized to manage public lands within the boundaries of a State in this Union. They are correct, and the Federal government is wrong. The American Lands Council has that information, here.
One of the phrases in my culture when I was growing up was – “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” My question today is why do most judges insist on remaining ignorant of the highest uncontested law of the land? It must be something like a fervent and worshipful passion for that un-named religion called “Statism“, the philosophy of worshiping authority over all else in the name of Statism; the theology of which was encapsulated accurately by one Adolf Hitler, who put it this way [1]:
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole … that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual…”
That is a classic example of Statism, and that is exactly the mindset of modern judges who deny a jury’s right and duty to nullify according to their consciences in any criminal case.
There is a wonderful article at the Fully Informed Jury Association website which plainly shows why We The People, when confronted with this sort of corruption coming from a damned judge, are morally justified in outright lying to the prosecuting attorneys and the judge during Voir Dire (the process of screening jurors with, by, and for bias favoring the government). Read it here – http://fija.org/docs/BR_YYYY_surviving_voir_dire.pdf.
Salute!
Elias Alias, Oath Keepers Editor
- See also: “Guerrilla Jurors: Sticking It To Leviathan“, co-authored by Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, and Don Doig, co-founder of the Fully Informed Jury Association
- 1 – Page 13 in The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff; copyright 1982 by Leonard Peikoff; published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Putnam, Inc., 275 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014; foreword by Ayn Rand; no ISBN in my paperback copy; Library of Congress number: 83-60247.
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.