Jury Nullification advocate indicted by feds; clear 1st Amendment violation

"Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience.

That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates a law against jury tampering.

Mr. Heicklen was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a not-guilty plea on Mr. Heicklen’s behalf when he refused to say how he would plead. During the proceeding, Mr. Heicklen railed at the judge and the government, and called the indictment 'a tissue of lies.'"

NYT article here

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This is a clear violation of the first amendment right to freedom of speech.  If a person can encourage violence and murder as long as the people he encourages have time to consider their actions, and have their right to free speech protected by court precedent, how much more so for the idea of jury nullification?  Jury nullification represents the trump card of the sovereign people against unjust laws.  There is a long history of jury nullification in Anglo-American history.  

As to Heicklen's being charged with jury tampering, that is BS because he never targeted any specific jury, only jurors in general. 

We should consider the right of jury nullification among our ninth amendment rights, and assert these rights whenever possible. 

Do not tell a judge or lawyer in voir dire before trial that you wont follow instructions. If you do, you will be dismissed:  

I was summoned for jury duty some years ago, and during voir dire, the attorney asked me whether I could obey the judge's instructions. I answered, "It all depends upon what those instructions are." Irritatingly, the judge asked me to explain myself. I explained that if I were on a jury back in the 1850s, and a person was on trial for violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting a runaway slave, I would vote for acquittal regardless of the judge's instructions. The reason is that slavery is unjust and any law supporting it is unjust. Needless to say, I was dismissed from jury duty.

Walter Williams, 11 July 2007

Get on the jury and plant seeds in the other jurors minds without getting overt about the idea of nullification (only when the law or prosecution is unjust, in your judgement, obviously).

Mike Vanderoegh's "Choose this day whom you will serve"

A great and eloquent essay to read, along TL Davis' "Of Oaths and Loyalties" post.

" There is another image that many of you can see in the mirror if you choose to take an honest look -- that of tax collector and nanny state bully boy. Yes, we know, you didn’t make the laws, some liberal puke with a control fetish did. But when you write speeding tickets for 3 miles over the limit because you’ve been told to write “x amount” of dollar value, or when you pull people over for “seatbelt violations” at random roadblocks and then ransack their cars without probable cause, can you understand how such behavior eats away like acid on your reputation -- individually and collectively -- as servants of the citizenry? What part of “to protect and serve” does that represent?

But worse than all that is the militarization of the police -- in equipment, tactics and, worst of all, attitude -- and the federalization of all law enforcement over the past forty years, but especially in the last ten. There were, last time I checked a few years ago, something like 750,000 full time state, city, university and college, metropolitan and non-metropolitan county, and other law enforcement officers in the United States. Add to that another 150,000 or so full time law enforcement personnel working for the federal government. With the growth of new agencies like the TSA during the “war on terror” (who, because of political correctness can’t seem to figure out who the real “terrorists” are so they merely oppress the rest of us in order to be “fair”) that number has certainly risen."

Read "Orders we will not obey" at Oathkeepers.

Must read for Constitutional Conservatives...

An important book by Thomas E. Woods, Nullification, is reviewed by Jeff Taylor at The American Conservative:

"The balance between the Supremacy Clause and the Tenth Amendment was maintained while each level of government stuck to its constitutionally proper areas of concern. But gradually federal power intruded into areas formally—and formerly—reserved to the states. Beginning with the Marshall court in the early 19th century, with its invention of the power of judicial review and its creative use of constitutional loopholes, the federal judiciary facilitated this growing imbalance. The Supreme Court’s bias should have been no surprise since it belonged to one of the competing levels of government. Once the federal judiciary decided to begin ruling in favor of its own team, there was no official mechanism that could stop the concentration of power in D.C."

Original Intent: Do the States or the Federal Government have ultimate authority?

In a book entitled A Brief Enquiry into the Nature of the Federal Government, written in 1840, Abel P. Upshur, a lawyer, judge, Virginia state politician, (who would become the 15th Secretary of State under Tyler, be one of the primary movers in bringing Texas into the Union, and 13th Secretary of the Navy), refutes the National Theory of the nature of the Federal government, as expounded by Daniel Webster and Joseph Story, who claimed that the Federal government was created as a national entity by a unified single people, not as an agent for the States and the people.

(Boldface statements below reflect my comments on the preceding sentence(s)):

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The Federal Government is the creature of the States.

Creature = Creation...Thirteen independent Sovereign states, through State Ratifying conventions, each independently voted to create the Federal government with the Constitution.  Historical fact.  There was no national referendum.

It is not a party to the Constitution, but the result of it the creation of that agreement which was made by the States as parties.

Each of the ratifying States was a party to a contract/compact/agreement that we call the Constitution.  The States and the people existed before the Federal government.  The Federal government was not a party to its own creation.

It is a mere agent, entrusted with limited powers for certain specific objects; which powers and objects are enumerated in the Constitution.

The thirteen original States made a new thing, the Federal government, to act as their agent, and delegated to it very specific tasks/powers.  Specifically, the numbered, listed, limited powers of Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.

Shall the agent be permitted to judge the extent of its own powers, without reference to his constituent?

That is:  Can the Federal government (logically) be the decider of just how much power it has?  No!  It could not be limited in its power.    Madison, Jefferson and others of their generation, federalists and anti-federalists, knew that each State had to independently decide if a law passed by Congress (i.e. Federal legislators), or decided at the level of the Supreme Court (i.e. Federal judiciary) or order at the Presidential/Cabinet level (i.e. Federal executive) conformed to the State's interpretation of the Constitution.  This was expounded in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.  This concept was invoked by northern and southern states before and after the War for Southern Independence, and is a resurgent concept today.

A State was a party to the compact known as the Constitution;  the federal agency was not.  Each State was equal in legal stature to each other State.  No one state could decide whether a law was Constitutional for another State;  each retained it's Sovereignty by the Tenth Amendment.  The Federal Supremacy clause in the Constitution could only logically apply to Constitutional Laws related to the Enumerated Powers of Article I Section 8.  Any question of constitutionality was therefore decided by a State legislature or judiciary, not by the Federal government.

To a certain extent, he is compelled to do this, in the very act of exercising them, but always in subordination to the authority by whom his powers were conferred.

The Federal government has to make its laws within the confines of its delegated powers.  Only in this can the Federal government stay within it's delegated mandate from the States which created it.

If this were not so, the result would be, that the agent would possess every power which the agent could confer, notwithstanding the plainest and most express terms of the grant. This would be against all principle and all reason.

If the Federal executive, judiciary, or legislature could decide what it's own limits were, what would you get?  A gigantic central power that continually grows in leaps and bounds outside its original intent.  

You get the monstrosity that we have today.  You have a government teetering on the brink of a totalitarian shift.  We are the frog put in the pot when the water was lukewarm, but now it is approaching a boiling point.  The people are starting to get uncomfortable...

 If such a rule would prevail in regard to government, a written constitution would be the idlest thing imaginable. It would afford no barrier against the usurpations of the government, and no security for the rights and liberties of the people.

Kinda like what we got now???

If then the Federal Government has no authority to judge, in the last resort, of the extent of its own powers, with what propriety can it be said that a single department of that government may do so? Nay. It is said that this department may not only judge for itself, but for the other departments also.
This is an absurdity as pernicious as it is gross and palpable.

Isn't it though?  Judge Upshur saw our future from 1840!  Imagine that!  Why do you think the court historians that glorify Supreme Federal power bury this viewpoint?  It completely undermines the federal stance about the extent of its own powers.

If the [Federal] judiciary may determine the powers of the Federal Government, it may pronounce them either less or more than they really are.

Try more, and more, and more, until you get the most nonsensical garbage, like invoking the Interstate Commerce clause to control what a farmer grows on his own land for his own personal consumption (Wickard vs. Filburn), or forcing (call it mandating if you want) you to buy health insurance, or controlling what you eat, or controlling a private business like GM, or propping up a private bank that deserved to fail, all with your money.  

A = A.  Tyranny plain and simple.  Cruel unjust use of power.

Etymology of Tyranny:

tyranny

late 14c., "cruel or unjust use of power," from O.Fr. tyrannie (13c.), from L.L. tyrannia "tyranny," from Gk. tyrannia "rule of a tyrant," from tyrannos "master" 

Condescension of a Supreme Court Justice, another Face of Tyranny

"The point I am making is that here is a man who sees himself as the ultimate law, not interpreting the law, which I have always contended was NOT their purpose, but merely reading the law and strictly applying the actual words to the laws in dispute, with prejudice against laws that infringe on the natural liberty of the citizen. Instead, they see the words, each one they might conflate out of proportion to arrive at an end that pleases the majority of them the most. These are the actions of kings, not men and certainly not citizens."

TL in exile asks you to join him in Washington DC on 21 January 2011, the Guardians of Liberty.  The people must confront a tyrannical government.  Watch the Fox News video of Justice Stephen Breyer.  It made me sick.  This is what we're up against.  Now think of 5 like him on the court, add the 14th amendment, and presto!  You've got tyranny!