"It's all about the money,"

[Don Paul]

Activists encourage jurors to take a stand

It seems to be an altruistic endeavor: Rally the populace to make

informed and conscientious decisions when serving as a juror.

But James Cox, campaign manager for the Fully Informed Jury

Association, said he was threatened with arrest outside the Broward

County Courthouse; received a citation from Homeland Security while

handing out literature in front of the Miami federal courthouse

complex; and is regularly questioned about his activities at the

federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.

His incendiary message seems to have hit a nerve.

"You have a right to sit on the jury to not only judge the facts of

the case but the law itself," he said. "If you think it's a bad law,

if you think it's unjust if this person is in court, you have a right

to vote for a not guilty verdict."

The Helena, Montana-based group encourages citizens to take a stand in

the jury room and not bow to peer pressure to convict if they feel

otherwise. Jury nullification, a jury that acquits when it believes

a law is immoral or wrongly applied, is a badge of honor for FIJA.

Criminal defense attorney David O. Markus of Markus & Markus in

Miami, said the association, for all its bluster, is right.

"The whole point of jury service is using your common sense and your

conscience," he said. "We don't want robots as jurors; we want

people."

Joseph DeMaria, a former federal prosecutor at Tew Cardenas in Miami,

is not sympathetic. He said the group is attempting to undermine

trials by encouraging jurors to ignore the rule of law, the framework

of the justice system, and possibly should be banned from any

interaction with jurors and prospective jurors.

"Every lawyer knows that if they tried to argue with the jury to

ignore the law and use their sympathy and engage in jury

nullification, they are going to end up in a mistrial and they are

going to end up reprimanded," he said.

Florida is a battleground for the association because state juries

have six members except in capital cases, said Ilo Jones, the

association's executive director.

"With six jurors, you have much less an opportunity for a

representative of the cross-section of the community," she said.

"It's crucial in Florida that we educate twice as many people."

Jones said the group has about 20,000 supporters nationwide from a

wide political spectrum but with a shared distrust of government.

Jones and Cox said they both fear the justice system is becoming a

mill for the world's largest prison system and the industry it

creates.

"It's all about the money," Cox said.

Primary Objective

The group's primary objection is to a standard jury instruction.

In the three states covered by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Florida, Georgia and Alabama, trial judges read the following to a

jury before deliberations: "You must make your decision only on the

basis of the testimony and other evidence presented here during the

trial; and you must not be influenced in any way by either sympathy or

prejudice for or against the defendant or the government. You must

also follow the law as I explain it to you whether you agree with that

law or not; and you must follow all of my instructions as a whole.

You may not single out or disregard any of the court's instructions on

the law."

Jones said this flies in the face of true justice.

"They are being explicitly instructed that they are not allowed to

vote their conscience," she said. Jones said the most egregious lack

of balance is in death penalty cases. Jury candidates are

automatically excused if they express political, religious, moral or

any other misgivings about recommending a death sentence.

Some studies have shown the vetting produces a panel more likely to

convict and not representative of the community at large.

Cox said plea bargains also undermine the jury system as prosecutors

offer significantly reduced sentences if defendants plead guilty.

"It's like you just entered a casino," Cox said.

Jeffrey Sloman, a former U.S. attorney now with the Ferraro Law Firm

in Coral Gables, disagrees that juries have become rubber stamps for

prosecutors and challenges the concept behind the pamphlets. He said

allowing jurors to impose their own agenda would "throw a couple

hundred years of jurisprudence out the window."

Jones said the group gets attention from judges and security guards

when they target a courthouse. One Florida judge even held up a

pamphlet and told jurors the group was "crazy" and to ignore the

information, Jones said.

The association denies its aim is jury tampering, though Jones said

one member got in trouble in California for handing out case-specific

information. Another member in Colorado was accused of tampering for

espousing the group's position while on a jury. Cox, who can

distribute up to 600 pamphlets a day, said he targets no particular

individual or groups outside courthouses.

The group publishes different pamphlets. Some are more

straight-forward that others. One flier, "Who owns your body?" urges

in strong language that jurors not surrender themselves to the

prosecution.

"Government judges and prosecutors crave raw power beyond legal limit

to their authority," the pamphlet states. "The power can only exist

if the person brought before the court is deceived by process into

surrendering ownership of his or her body and responsibility for

individual decisions."

Resonates With Women Cox said the flier resonates with women. Jones

said the high-minded wording gets to the core of a problem in American

jurisprudence: The jury is not there to convict but to protect.

Cox said he has been surprised at how much resistance he's encountered

at courthouses. A videotape on the group's Florida chapter website

shows security at the Broward County Courthouse threatening Cox with

arrest.

"Don't be shoving these in their face. I'll be watching," a security

officer tells Cox. After being ushered away from the Fort Lauderdale

federal courthouse for weeks, he said federal marshals deputies

finally conceded he was within his First Amendment rights to hand out

the literature.

Still, on Nov. 2, in front of the Miami federal courthouse complex,

Cox was given a federal citation for failure to comply with police

instructions and told he had "no expectation of rights."

The U.S. Marshals Service, which coordinates security at federal

courthouses, did not respond to a call for comment by deadline.

The office of Chief U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said he was

out of town Friday and not available for comment.

'Amazing' Resistance Cox said it's amazing there is so much resistance

to pamphleteering, given its historical significance.

"Jurors are not sitting in the courtroom to enforce government laws

and dispense punishment and dispense fines for government regulation,"

Jones said. "The primary reason we have juries is to protect private

individuals from government tyranny."

But DeMaria, the former prosecutor, said the group is courting

tyranny.

"The views are totally wrong, and they are totally undemocratic," he

said. "What they are doing is really destructive to the rule of the

law."

The above article published by John Pacenti, Daily Business Review

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Sterling Fisher

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