FIJA ourtreach has spread over NH. FIJA stands for the Fully Informed Jury Association (http://fija.org). There have been outreach events at the Seacoast, Manchester, Concord, Grafton County and Keene. What is this information that has activists all over the state going out on early mornings to get in the hands of potential jurors?

Did you know that when you are a juror, you have the right to judge not only the facts of the case, but the law itself? This is what is known as jury nullification, that is, a law can be nullified by a jury. Lysander Spooner wrote in Trial by Jury:

“For more than six hundred years - that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 - there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law.

But for their right to judge the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters Of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.”

Here is what some judges say on the issue of jury nullification:

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence … and the courts must abide by that decision. – US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006

The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge. – U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972

The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy. – John Jay, Joint-author of the Federalist Papers and first U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice

What does the NH Bar Association have to say about jury nullifcation? Eugene M. Van Loan, III wrote for the association:

As a matter of historical fact, jury nullification has indeed occurred in the United States. Witness, for example, the notable failures to obtain successful prosecutions in the mid-19th century of persons charged with harboring runaway slaves in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act and the refusal of some juries during the Prohibition era to convict people charged with violating the Volstead Act. On the other side of the coin, we are all aware of the conviction of the Salem "witches" by their Puritan neighbors and the all-too-numerous instances of Jim Crow juries in the South convicting blacks simply on account of their color. By virtue of their ability to render a so-called "general verdict" (by which is meant that the jury simply returns a verdict of guilty or not guilty), jurors in such cases were able to "take the law into their own hands".
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The notion that the jury is an agency of democracy which should act as a "safety valve" for the community when it is confronted with the responsibility of enforcing a purportedly "unjust law" is nothing more than a misguided libertarianism which threatens the rule of law. Indeed, advocating the right of a jury of twelve unelected citizens chosen at random from a list of registered voters to disregard a law passed by our elected representatives and signed by our elected governor is almost as anti-democratic as one can get. This is the reverse of the classic problem of the tyranny of the majority; it is the tyranny of a minority.

Translation: this is just too threatening to the power of government. So we're not going to tell you that you have this right. In fact, we might prosecute people who endeavor to tell you that you have this right. Several FIJA activists around the country have indeed be arrested for handing out jury nullification brochures.

http://www.fijanh.info/