Click here to view the embedded video.

Jury nullification is an effective way of countering prosecutorial abuse and limiting the power and intrusiveness of the legislature. The historical records indicate jury nullification played a major role in abolishing slavery, winning women’s suffrage, and the Repeal of Alcohol Prohibition.

Perhaps jury nullification will become the way the war on marijuana ends as happened in the Loren Swift case.

Juries are our last line of defense against the inappropriate use of power by the government.

Sam Smith wrote in What lawyers & judges won’t tell you about juries that according to the Yale Law Journal in 1964, during the first third of the 19th century judges did inform juries of the right, forcing lawyers to argue “the law — its interpretation and validity — to the jury.”

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi noted that “jury nullification is a constitutional right that every individual person who is called for jury duty possesses, and unless we appreciate that right, we will lose it because the courts will take it from us.”

“I think jury nullification is going to be part of the answer regarding states’ rights in future cases,” said former jury foreman Charles Sackett.

Clay S. Conrad wrote the 1998 book Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, that

Central to the history of trial by jury is the right of jurors to vote “not guilty” if the law is unjust or unjustly applied.

When jurors acquit a factually guilty defendant, we say that the jury “nullified” the law. The Founding Fathers believed that juries in criminal trials had a role to play as the “conscience of the community,” and relied on juries’ “nullifying” to hold the government to the principles of the Constitution.

Yet over the last century and a half, this power of jurors has been derided and ignored by American courts, to the point that today few jurors are aware that an important part of their role is, in the words of the Supreme Court, to “prevent oppression by the government.”

The Words of the Founding Fathers

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction…
if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty
they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
– Alexander Hamilton, 1804

It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict
according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience,
though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
–John Adams, 1771

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man
by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
– Thomas Jefferson, 1789

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made
by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they
cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood;
if they… undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows
what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow
– James Madison

Find out more at these links:

FNORD

Agricultural producers, under economic attack for generations in the United States, need to receive parity pricing for their produce in order to begin another round of the economic cycle without debt. Forcing agricultural producers into debt at the beginning of the economic cycle impoverishes everyone except the financial services industry parasites who profit at everyone else’s expense.

Marijuana, cannabis, hemp or whatever you call it may well be the last agricultural crop grown in the United States that is capable of providing enough income to be worthwhile growing. Profitable agriculture only appears possible outside of a legal system created to benefit a pathological elite, by definition an activity pursued only by outlaws.

This fact alone proves the lie to the political theater misrepresenting open markets and free trade. The only open markets and free trade possible today operates outside of the licensing, regulation and taxation of our pathocracy.

The free and independent culture surrounding marijuana agriculture, even as harassed and persecuted as it is, may be one of the last widespread autonomous agricultural activities available to Americans. Today parity pricing only exists outside of the law.

While many now seek to end the illogical criminalization of this most useful of all plants it seems few wish to look with open eyes at the likely outcome of their success. The price all will pay to end the justified fear of taking a few tokes will be the end of all profitable agriculture.

The growing plea for outrageous taxation levels on every step of bringing marijuana to a legalized market will end the financial incentive to grow it. We are witnessing widespread voluntary servitude for the illusionary benefit of reduced persecution.

Notice I said “reduced persecution” and not the end of persecution. Perhaps people have grown so used to their enslavement within the panopticon that they have grown numb to how modern society has become penal and coercive in nature.

Few seem to realize that licensing, regulation and taxation requires the increased intrusion of an increasingly militant and corrupt government in personal private affairs. The idea that the decriminalization of marijuana will somehow stop the police from “crawling up your ass” is far from realistic.

As it stands, only the complete collapse of our pathocracy will allow the fair pricing of agricultural products. Perhaps then people will learn to manage money as a common resource and public utility rather than the private monopoly money is today.

With decriminalization, marijuana cultivation will eventually come under the control of government subsidized agribusiness as all other commercial crops already have. The one commercial crop still supporting many rural communities will cease to be profitable.

This all comes from confusing the symptoms of unjust persecution with the cause of unjust persecution. The entire population of marijuana decriminalization activists have been tricked into petitioning their oppressors for more oppression.

The oppressors desired this outcome and manipulated events so that people will come to them of their own free will begging for more laws, more regulations, more licensing requirements and more taxes. The people they have tricked now look only to the small areas their attention has been directed to and are not aware of the greater game at play.

By terrorizing marijuana enthusiasts with militarized domestic law enforcement, those who created, empowered and armed marijuana eradication teams in the first place now weigh the various options for profit and control the marijuana enthusiasts themselves propose. Once a common cause among most who opposed our pathocracy, marijuana decriminalization has become a niche issue apart from greater issues of social injustice.

Why not advocate the return to parity for all agriculture products? This would only return our entire economy to profitability and limit the power of the central banks.

Why accept any measure of government control over what we choose to put in our bodies at all? This would only free communities of people from the onerous violent intrusion of domestic armed forces.

How can anyone believe that with decriminalization of marijuana under the hand of oppression nothing else will change? Transferring the wealth of original production from an underground economy to our pathocracy will only strengthen those who have oppressed and terrorized us while weakening those who resisted them.

We will not have more freedom. We will have less freedom.

The rich will become richer and the poor will become poorer as the door closes upon the last opportunity to sell an agricultural product at parity. After all of this I can only hope that at least you will still be able to get high from smoking it.

But do not count on it.

What do you think?