Wednesday, November 22, 2006

FIJA - Fully Informed Jury Act

Someone asked: What is FIJA?

from
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/FIJA.html

>What is FIJA? I'm due to perform jury duty next week and I would like
>to know a little more about Fully Informed Jury Act is it? In particular
>I heard that juries have a right to find someone innocent if they
>think the law which the defendent is accused of breaking is unjust.

You heard right. It's called jury nullification, and it has been a part of our legal tradition since 1670AD, when 4 jurors refused to convict William Penn for preaching to Quakers. They were imprisoned without sustenance as punishment for failing to uphold the King's Law.

The jurors were freed amidst great uproar on a writ of habeus corpus, and the precedent that jurors cannot be punished for failing to uphold the law has stood the test of time. It was recently upheld in the US in 1972. The Bill of Rights intentionally casts this right in concrete, by guaranteeing trial by jury and by forbidding double jeopardy.

FIJA stands for Fully Informed Jury Association, a nation-wide grassroots organization which is lobbying for statutory acts or amendments to state constitutions which would inform juries of their powers. The wording of a sample statutory act is quite long, and would vary from state to state, but a sample amendment is fairly simple:

"Whenever state or local govt is one of the parties in any trial by jury, the court must inform the jurors that in addition to their responsibility to judge the facts of the case, they have an inherent right to judge the law as itself."

As you may have read elsewhere there is little controversy over the existence of this power. The controversy is over whether jurors should be informed of it. The way it stands in 48 states (but not Ind or Md) is that the judge is allowed to (falsely) inform jurors that they must decide the case based only on the facts, and any appeal by the defense for a not-guilty verdict based on the immorality of the law is grounds for contempt and a mistrial.

It was not always this way. For the first 80 years of the USA, jurors were routinely informed of their power to judge the law as well as the facts, and this is enshrined in several state constitutions as well. Today, only Md and Ind still inform their jurors, however. Court rulings favoring the powers of judges have chipped away at it. You'd think that judges would have had to disqualify themselves from such rulings!

FIJA National has lots of historical information, brochure/handouts, and an excellent newspaper. There is a local FIJA movement in almost all 50 states, as well. Call 406 793-5550 and ask for an info packet, or to find out about your local group.

The "True or False" Brochure. At 6 cents each you can get a hundred, and give one to all your friends and neighbors.

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/FIJA.html

--------------

hummm....anyone else ever hear about this? ..... Az

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home