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OPINION

Do Your Jury Duty to Fight Tyranny

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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In the military, you always seek to find the enemy’s vulnerability, the point of failure that you can hit and disrupt the entire enemy plan, and that is true for those of us fighting the current wave of lawfare being waged against patriotic Americans. They are using the legal system to neutralize and destroy patriotic Americans. But there is a weak point where we can defeat them.

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The jury.

You can be that disruption. All you have to do is be a juror and play your part. And your part is determining what is true and what is false. If you do that well, you can stop them. But you have to do your job. You have to show up, get on a jury, and deliberate properly.-

Let’s start with the basics. A jury is a group of citizens who make factual determinations in criminals and civil cases. The judge handles the administration of the court proceedings and rules on questions of law. For example, the court will rule on whether the National Otter Protection Act has a three-year or four-year statute of limitations for the crime of otter harassment (I choose otter law for my example because otters are delightful and thinking about them is a welcome break from the misery of watching my country devolve into tyranny). The accused might argue three years, the government four years. That is a purely legal question – what is the law applicable in this case?

As a juror, you will rule on the fact questions. You determine what happened. For instance, you would decide when the otter was harassed, as well as whether he was molested at all. The judge will tell you what the applicable law is in the case to guide your fact finding. Your fact finding is, to a large degree, insulated from review. On appeal, with few exceptions, the courts look at legal error, not factual error. For instance, the convicted otter molester might appeal saying the statute of limitations should be only three years, but that the harassment occurred more than four years before charges were filed. The court of appeals might find the trial court was right that the otter harassment charge statute of limitations was four years, not three. But it will not review your jury’s factual determination that the otter harassment occurred three years, six months before the charges were filed. That’s important – remember that. Your jury’s factual determinations are essentially set in stone.

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So, you see that as a juror, it is regular American citizens who decide what the truth is. You will have the prosecution’s facts and the defense facts, and you get to choose which is true – this aspect of law freaks people out because, to lawyers, the word “facts” does not refer to something that is true but to something that a jury could find is true.

As we have seen, juries have huge power. And do not believe that biases do not enter into it. In 95 percent Democrat Washington, DC, every Republican will be convicted and every Democrat acquitted. That’s why the feds, who care about convictions and not justice, break their backs bending over to get cases against Republicans or Republican-adjacent defendants heard in DC. How do they get on juries if they are biased? Often they simply lie to hide their prejudices. Do not do this. Nothing will ever happen to a leftist juror who lies, but you could get prosecuted.

It is vital that conservatives show up for jury duty, but do it in a smart and honest way. Remember, you must be honest and scrupulously follow the law as given to you by the judge. And then you must make the government prove its case. 

You will be questioned before being seated on a jury, a process called voir dire. That’s when lawyers attempt to get rid of obviously biased jurors. Again, always be honest. If I were called to a federal jury pool and asked what I think of the FBI, I would have to honestly answer that I have many articles offering my view that it is a disgraced institution whose corruption is matched only by its incompetence. That’s the truth, and you must be truthful. But not everyone has a public record of contempt to disclose. If you have doubts about the FBI, you would answer that you have doubts about the FBI. And you would honestly state that if the evidence offered from an FBI agent was convincing, you would believe it. In other words, there’s no requirement that you disqualify yourself by going on a tirade – a courtroom is not the place to do that. If you are hopelessly biased against the government, you have to say so. If true, your honest and proper answer is that you have doubts but the strength of the evidence will convince you. The US attorney might still use a challenge to get rid of you, but the judge will not do it on account of clear bias (as I assume he would do with me since I have a public history criticizing the agency.

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Again, never lie under oath. I assume you are a fair-minded citizen interested in justice, and we need them on juries.

When you get on the jury, actually do your job and evaluate the evidence. Keep in mind that many normies believe that simply because someone is charged, he is guilty. That’s baloney. So is the idea that cops do not lie. As my mom, the long-time judge, told me, “Everybody lies.” Use your common sense to see who is telling the truth, and make the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge will give you your jurisdiction’s wording of that standard, but it essentially means that there is no reasonable explanation other than the accused did it. Be ruthless about that. You have someone’s life in your hands and if the government did not prove there is no other possible explanation, acquit. Remember, your not guilty verdict cannot be appealed, and your findings cannot be challenged. 

When deliberating, you may have dumb jurors. I did when a defense attorney was crazy enough to let me on a jury decades ago. Be reasonable and fair. Do not be obnoxious – you might get kicked off. If your view is that the accused is not guilty, explain why and stick with it unless convinced by the evidence to change your mind. A hung jury is one where there is no verdict (criminal cases must usually be unanimous). Often the accused will be retried.

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Now, if you talk about “jury nullification,” that will get you kicked off a jury panel. Essentially, this means willfully ignoring the law the judge gives you to get the result you want. You’re not going to do that. You are going to deliberate and come to a verdict based only on the evidence presented and the law provided to you. The government may not like how that turns out, and may call an acquittal “jury nullification,” but you are going to act strictly and completely properly and consider only the facts and the law.

Remember, you are the sole judge of the facts. That’s your decision. 

And if you do your job, the kind of garbage cases brought by Soros DAs and Democrat prosecutors will fail. After a while, they will stop bringing them. Conservatives need to get on juries and do their job. The tyrants win when juries become rubber stamps for ridiculous accusations and false charges. So, when that jury summons come, show up – dressed like a normal person and ready to answer the questions fully and honestly in voir dire.

And then do your job, juror. Because the jury system is the point of failure for tyranny.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, as well as his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America. 

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