News from the liberterrain…
Manhattan prosecutor Rebecca Mermelstein, assigned to Julian Heicklen's alleged jury tampering case for distributing Fully Informed Jury Association pamphlets near the Manhattan courthouse last year, declared that jury nullification is "not protected by the First Amendment."
Heicklen has occupied many column inches in the Dallas Libertarian Examiner and especially in its national companion site the Libertarian News Examiner over the years.
Now Stephen C. Webster, Senior Editor at Raw Story and former contributor to such publications as the Dallas Business Journal, Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Weekly, has filed his own story on the now 79-year-old libertarian rights activist.
"Unsurprisingly," Webster wrote, "Heicklen has asked the judge for a jury trial. The prosecutor, also unsurprisingly, is opposed" because Heicklen would simple urge a jury to nullify in a case against him.
His case came to a head in late November when prosecutors filed a brief contending that his "advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred."
Prosecutors further contend, "No legal system could long survive if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable."
But jury rights advocates contend this position is tantamount to claiming that "the law" belongs solely to the government and not to the people who must live under it.
The New York Times ran a lengthy, detailed story about the case on Sunday.
Heicklen, in a message to his Tyranny Fighters supporters, announced, "There will be a hearing before Judge Kimba Wood on Monday, December 12, 2011, at 10:00 am for the presumably sole purpose of discussing the constitutionality of my activities. I will be surprised if the discussion will be so limited."
Based on his nearly yearlong legal battle in this case, Heicklen said in an email, "I think that there is no possibility that I can win this case in the courts. Already, I have been denied a jury trial in conflict with the US Constitution. This case can only be won in the court of public opinion. I hope that all of you will help make sure that the public is fully informed."
Libertarians may wish to search the Constitution for these words:
Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech except for the words "jury nullification."
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