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Editor:
So Kaye Patchett believes that mere citizens are way too gullible and stupid to decide right from wrong, and feels that the job should be left strictly to the proper authorities ("Panel of judges preferable to current jury system," Sept. 4)? Maybe she feels that we should also employ a pool of professional voters who, like the judges she wants us to place our full faith in, would decide our fate without the encumbrances of accountability. After all, it's obvious that "we the people" haven't been doing such a hot job with that civic duty either!
What Patchett fails to address is that jury duty, like voting, is a right intended to insure that "we the people" remain in control of our government. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the accepted role of the jury, in addition to judging the facts of the case, was to act as a final, "common sense" test of the law. It's a very simple concept. The jury has the full right and responsibility to vote their conscience and refuse to convict someone for violating a "bad" law.
A detailed historical analysis of jury veto power, also called jury nullification of law, appeared in the Yale Law Review in 1964. It held that "The right of the jury to decide questions of law was widely recognized in the colonies. In 1771, John Adams stated unequivocally that a juror should ignore a judge's instruction on the law if it violates fundamental principles: There is much evidence of the general acceptance of this principle in the period immediately after the Constitution was adopted."
In answer to Patchett's rather insulting opinion of the abilities of the average jury, if a jury can understand the law, it can certainly judge it. If the jury cannot understand the law, then it's unreasonable to expect ordinary people to understand and obey it, which is an excellent reason to acquit anyone accused of breaking it, and to continue to do so until the legislature makes the law understandable. Neither high intelligence nor advanced education is a prerequisite to judging right and wrong, which is what juries do. Twelve illiterate men decided it was not wrong for William Penn to deliver a Quaker sermon, even though it was illegal at the time. Would a panel of government appointed judges have done the same?
Jurors also refused to convict John Peter Zenger, a colonial American publisher who was arrested for printing news critical of the Royal Governor of New York Colony and his cronies, accusing them of corruption. His accusations were all true, but the court (One of those judges that Patchett would place in full command of our legal system), informed his jury that under the law, "...truth is no defense." Though technically guilty, Zenger was acquitted in about 15 minutes, and his case spawned recognition of our right to a free press.
Cases like these were part of the political heritage of the Founders, which may explain why trial by jury was incorporated as a basic constitutional premise. The power of which has been used to acquit people arrested under such faulty laws as The Fugitive Slave Act, or alcohol prohibition, and helped bring about repeal of the same. This same power is our last, best hope for protection from current or future unconstitutional legislation, like The Communications Decency Act, or most of the recent anti-terrorism legislation that expands domestic surveillance and allows the use of illegally obtained evidence.
As to Kaye Patchett's opinion that the Supreme Court is an ideal model after which the lower courts should be modeled, would this be the same U.S. Supreme Court which continually upheld the constitutionality of slavery and post-slavery Jim Crow Laws? Hardly a shining example of American justice!
For more information on your rights and powers as a juror, please contact The Fully Informed Jury Association at 1-800-TEL-JURY, or on the Web, go to http://www.primenet.com/~slack/fija/fija.html.
Scott Benjamin
senior staff technician Optical Sciences
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