Mon Nov 26, 2007 06:05

Rating: _____

In this day when our Politicians give lip service to strengthening the family unit, why are families destroyed by the pursuit of crimes where there is no victim. The penalties of which usually carry sentences that are longer then sentences of assault, rape, theft, fraud and manslaughter. Why are the courts allowed to compel juries to only the law and not the justice of criminal cases. Why are so many cases pled out.
Two sure ways to corral the tyrannical abuses of the judicial as it exists now would be to;
One make sure that every man woman and child know their rights as jurors to decide both fact and law as has been the case since 1738 long before we were even a nation
Two if every defendant in this land when accused of breaking the law no matter how trivial demand trial by jury, our system as it is would not be able to survive.
It is my opinion that this would have the power to inundate our justice system to where it either would have to revisit and strike from the books unjust laws and return us to common law and justice, or the sham that has been in place as our justice system for the last 100 years being a tyranny would reveal itself to the whole world as juries would be abolished outright.
Were you aware that before the turn of the 20 Century juries were not given the same jury instructions we have today? Our Courts to this day abide this Jim Crow Law

Sparf & Hansen v. U S, 156 U.S. 51 (1895) Commentary by Jon Roland (According to www.constitution.org)
This is the case that represents the seizure of the Supreme Court by the forces of Lord Mansfield and the deposing of the forces of Lord Camden, two British judges who led, respectively, the doctrine that questions of law should be decided only by the judge in a jury trial, and the doctrine that in a jury trial, the jury are the true judges and have the duty to judge the law as well as the facts in the case. The Mansfield doctrine has prevailed in U.S. courts ever since, extending to the state level. However, it remains controversial, and the Camden doctrine awaits a restoration. Historically, juries in the colonial period and early decades of the Republic decided both law and fact. Their pre-eminence in judgment was unquestioned, and it was that model that the founders had in mind when they adopted the requirements for jury trials in both civil and criminal trials. There are several ways to interpret the prevailing opinion in this case, but essentially it was a ruling that it was not a reversible error to fail to inform a jury of their right, power, and duty to decide both the law and the facts. In one sense, that was not a remarkable position, because at the time, the power and duty of a jury to decide both was general knowledge. The problem for later jurisprudence is that courts have taken this precedent as a license to sanction defendants and their counsel for attempting to inform juries of their power and duty to decide the law. The transition from not reversing a decision for failing to inform the jury to holding a defense lawyer or his client in contempt for trying to do so is troubling for legal philosophers, and the movement to overturn this judicial practice is growing in strength.

Take a minute, honestly ask yourself if there is not a law on the books today that if prosecuted against you, could leave you with a felony conviction? I'm not talking about the simple common laws that applied 100 years ago, I am talking about dui's, child abuse, financial, copyrights, prostitution, revenue, drugs, alcohol, guns and even cigarettes which some states are proposing laws that would make it child abuse. Where does the governments interest lie in criminalizing all of the population, and how does it truly serve the publics interest to prosecute victim-less crimes, the government cannot keep violent offenders in prison due to the explosion of prison population growth over the last forty years

According to jurist.law.pitt.edu US prison population up eight-fold since 1970: report
The US prison population is currently eight times as high as it was in 1970, but zealous prosecution and tough sentencing guidelines have done little to curb crime, according to a report released Monday by the JFA Institute [advocacy website], a Washington criminal justice research group. The report said:

Proponents of prison expansion have heralded this growth as a smashing success. But a large number of studies contradict that claim. Most scientific evidence suggests that there is little if any relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates. In many cases, crime rates have risen or declined independent of imprisonment rates. New York City, for example, has produced one of the nation’s largest declines in crime in the nation while significantly reducing its jail and prison populations. Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, and Massachusetts have also reduced their prison populations during the same time that crime rates were declining.

According to the Washington Post

"A record 7 million people -- one in every 32 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to the report. More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

These numbers do not include the convictions before, going back to the seventies and the beginning of the war on crime, the war on drugs, MADD alcohol laws, ect, ect. ect.
So what is the interest served by this catch and release policy? could the government have an interest in the rights of otherwise law abiding peoples loss in voting , jury duty, the right to possess arms,the right to travel freely and the right to bear witness in a public trial? Is our Judicial our national citizens modern day Judas?

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