Jury Nullification
From CyberOne Wiki
This portrait of Mark DeWolfe Howe hangs in Griswold Hall. Mark wrote and taught about the American Jury.
Jurors have not only have a right, but a duty....to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
- John Adams
Preliminary Jury Instructions
Ladies and gentleman of the jury:
Thank you for honoring your citizen’s duty by coming forward to serve today on this jury. Each one of you, as a juror, is as much an agent of our government as I am. We each have our roles and responsibilities in the process of justice in which you will be participating.
My role as presiding judge is to direct the process of the trial and to instruct and guide you in the performance of your jury duty. Your role is to determine whether the defendants are guilty beyond reasonable doubt of committing a crime.
As jurors you will speak for the people. Yours will be the voice of the original founding citizens of our government, who gathered together in constitutional convention and created our government and fundamental law.
The Massachusetts Constitution frames our task here today. It is the founding document of our government and the source of our law.
It says that the purpose of government is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquillity their natural rights, and the blessings of life.
No subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.
You are brought together today and constituted as a jury in order to resolve a charge brought by the prosecution that public tranquility has been criminally breached by the defendants act of sharing the smoking a marijuana cigarette on Boston Common. That charge is based on an enactment of our legislature, General Law 94C chapter 34 which declares those who possess and use marijuana to be criminals.
You are the ultimate judge of whether a crime has been committed. A defendant’s act, to be a crime, must be more than violation of a statute. It must be an offense to the safety and tranquility of our community that, in your judgment as the conscience of our community, warrants your verdict of criminal guilt.
Our founders places as the highest values in forming our government the value liberty, safety and tranquility. As a bulwark of liberty against government oppression, they built our justice system with careful and thoughtful checks and balances. They created a government not by creating one institutional power but by creating three, and off-set them against each other in a system of checks and balances, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. Notwithstanding all the checks and balances among these three institutional branches of government, where a citizen’s liberty is at stake our constitution also provided a further check: trial by jury. No citizen’s liberty may be sacrificed without a verdict of criminal guilt by a jury his peers, which, for this case, you now comprise.
Your power is not to decide the law. I will instruct you as to the applicable law.
It will be your responsibility to determine first whether the letter of the the law as I have given it to you is met by factual proof beyond reasonable doubt.
If the letter of the law is met, it is your further responsibility and most vital role under our constitution, drawing on your wisdom as the constituted conscience of our community, to determine whether the defendants conduct warrants your judgment of criminal guilt.
With respect to General Law 94C s.34 I have found there is good reason for it at least to a point at which reasonable persons can differ. The statute is constitutional. I so instruct you.
But you must determine whether the defendants committed a crime. A crime is an offense against the peace and tranquility of our community sufficient in your judgment as the conscience of our community to warrant your verdict of criminal guilt, thereby authorizing the state to take the defendant’s liberty away.
To perform this responsibility you will have the statutory charge presented to you, then factual proof of the charge by the prosecution, duly tested by the defense. If at that point I deem the proof not sufficient to support a factual conclusion of guilt I will excuse you and will myself enter a verdict of “not guilty.” If however I judge the evidence sufficient to go forward, you will be asked to deliberate and reach your verdict, to find beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant acted in the manner proscribed by the legislative statute and that the defendants action constitutes a breach of the safety and tranquility of our community that warrants the resulting sacrifice of the defendants liberty.
In performing this duty you will be functioning as the ultimate check on the power of oppressive government to take citizen liberty away.
Respectfully submitted,
Defendant, Richard Cusick
By his attorneys
_________________________
Matthew H. Feinberg, Esq.
BBO#
Feinberg & Kamholtz
125 Summer Street
Boston, Ma 02110
(617) 526-0700
_________________________
Steven S. Epstein, Esq.
BBO# 546863
64 Central Street
Georgetown, MA 01833
(978) 352-3300
Defendant, R. Keith Stroup
By his attorneys
_________________________
Charles R. Nesson
BBO#
5 Hubbard Park Road
Cambridge MA 02138
617-495-4609
_________________________
Fern L. Nesson
5 Hubbard Park Road
Cambridge MA 02138
617-547-9469
