Jury Nullification: The Power of the Juror To Veto Tyrannical Law

Tyranny With Permission of the Jury

I spoke with a pro-lifer recently who did some hard time behind bars a few years ago for doing a "pro-life rescue". His name was Cal Zastrow (he is presently the Field Coordinator for the Constitution Party). He was one of the first "pro-life rescuers" to be prosecuted by the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) that Congress passed in 1994. His crime was joining with other "rescuers" on the property of an abortion clinic, kneeling down in prayer, and refusing to move when told to do so. They shut down the child-killing center for a day and lives were saved as a result! Before the FACE Act was passed, such "rescues" would earn them a day to a week in jail, but with the FACE Act, pro-lifers started facing months to years.

Across a grocery store aisle, Mr. Zastrow saw one of the jurors who presided over his trial and conviction that landed him behind bars for ninety days. He approached her, introduced himself, and asked if he could speak with her a minute. She consented. He asked her if she thought abortion was murder. The woman said that she did. He asked her if she thought that the non-violent sit-in they performed at the abortuary stopped murders from taking place. The woman again admitted that it probably did.

"Why did you send me to prison for ninety days then?"

"The Judge told us that we had no alternative," she responded. "He was to decide the matters of law, we were to decide the matters of fact, the facts were not in dispute and the law was unambiguous. We therefore had to declare you guilty!"

This dialogue exposes a crippling ignorance of the typical American juror. I have news for you, prospective jurors: You are NOT obligated to enforce bad law! You do NOT have to send people to jail who you don't think deserve to go there, regardless of what the law says!

The Laws of Our Land

The basis of that statement is the laws of our land. That’s right. The laws of our land! The laws of our land are two-fold: the laws of God, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. First and foremost, the laws of God make up the laws of our land because the laws of God are universal: they are without boundaries. God’s law reigns supreme over the laws of every land, over all man-made statutes and edicts. When any King contradicts the King of Kings, guess who’s right? When the Supreme Court and the most Supreme Court conflict, the Supreme Judge of the world overrules.

Secondly, the basis for my statement is the laws upon which this nation was founded. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights - those founding documents make it clear that the government exists to protect the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are God-given and are inalienable - that is, they are not to be violated by men. Those documents describe a system of checks and balances between the executive, the Congress, and the judiciary, comprised of judge and jury, designed to limit the power of the Federal government. The government has no right to deprive any human being within its jurisdiction of life, liberty, or property, without due process, which includes a trial by an independent jury of one's peers. In order words, in the most unambiguous terms, the government is forbidden to kill innocent human beings by the very document that empowers it! It further obligates them to protect the weak from the strong with sanctions appropriate for the crime.

When the Federal government mandated legal abortion in all 50 states in 1973, they declared murder lawful, and violated not only the law of God, but also the laws of the land. The President, Congress, and the Supreme Court usurped power that God had not given them. No man or group of men, not even a unanimous democratic consensus for that matter, has the power to make evil to be good and good evil any more than they have the power to overthrow God and put themselves in His throne! Elected leaders have no more right to usurp and rule unlawfully than foreign terrorists who kidnapped the Federal government would have a right to rule this nation! Our leaders have usurped power that neither God nor the laws of this land inscribed in our founding documents have given them. They want us to render unto Ceasar that which belongs only to God. Mindless submission to the satanic law that justifies aborting the lives of innocent human beings would be the contemporary equivalent of taking the mark of the beast and worshiping his image because the government says you have to!

The Jury: How the Ordinary American Can Stop Tyrannical Law

One of the peaceful means whereby the ordinary citizen can put the brakes on tyranny is through their jury vote. The ordinary American juror has the constitutional power to do what the Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branch of the government have been obligated to do and have not. The ordinary American juror has that much power! He doesn't need to raise millions of dollars in a successful political campaign or start a massive grassroots effort to call or write Congressmen and Senators. He doesn't need to lobby Congress or run for office. The juror has the power to stop tyranny dead in its tracks by refusing to enforce legislation contrary to the laws of God and the principles engraved in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Congress, the President, the Supreme Court - none of these can enforce bad law! Congress can draft it, the President can sign it, the Federal judges can interpret it, but our nation’s founders decided that a jury of one’s peers would decide guilt or innocence. A jury is a critical part of our systems of checks and balances, and a morally upright, knowledgeable, independent jury is critical to the preservation of our God-given liberties.

Why a jury? Our founders realized that centralized government power would be faced with the temptation to terrorize its people and begin to pass laws that would violate the rights of those it was intended to protect. So they wove this "ace in the hole" into our form of government, a trump card they believed good citizens could use to keep this new, experimental government in check. Juries guard against government-condoned injustice by being disinterested parties and by having the authority to decide guilt or innocence regardless of the instructions of the judge or the law. Under obligation to God supremely and the Constitution secondarily, they have the right and the power to check tyrannical abuses that violate God-given rights.

For instance, even though Roe versus Wade has declared child-killing to be legal, even though the FACE Act says Cal Zastrow shouldn't do what he did, and even though Cal Zastrow admits to doing what the law says that he shouldn't do, the jury has the power to reject the instructions of the Judge and the FACE Act and declare Mr. Zastrow "Not Guilty". This is called jury nullification or jury veto power, and is a well established legal principle.

Four Jurors Refused to Convict William Penn and Gave America the Freedom of Religion

The year is 1670. William Penn is on trial for violation of the Conventicle Act. This is a piece of legislation that formalizes the Church of England as the only legal church. Penn was charged with preaching a different view of the Bible than that of the Church of England. He believed in freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to peacefully assemble. He believed that this was a natural right that came from God, and he intended to be a good steward of that which God had given him. His crime of preaching could have gotten him executed! But he loved not his life unto death.

After the trial, in which Penn’s guilt of transgressing this law was proved, four of the twelve jurors declared William Penn "Not guilty"! Those four jurors withstood the wrath of the government of England for not doing as they were told! They spent nine weeks of torture in prison, often without food or water, soaked with urine and smeared with feces, and threatened with heavy fines. Yet they declared, "Our liberty is not for sale."

As a result of their persistence, Penn was freed and the Coventicle Act was struck down through jury nullification. Freedom of religion was established and became part of the English Bill of Rights; later it became inscribed into the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. All because of four jurors! These brave men submitted to King Jesus and His laws supremely and, as a result, a tyrannical and unconscionable dictate of man was nullified.

The Jury Declared John Peter Zenger "Not Guilty" and Gave America Freedom of the Press

It is November of 1734. A printer named John Peter Zenger has been arrested for seditious libel against the Royal Governor of the Colony of New York. He criticized the government and provided evidence to the public of the Governor’s corruption. The English politicians were furious! The Colony of New York forbade any publication without prior government approval. The colonists had not yet established the freedom of the press. Zenger, unintimidated by corrupt government officials, defied this censorship and published articles that were strongly critical of government corruption. Soon, he was arrested for it.

When brought to trial in August of 1735, Zenger admitted that he published the articles, but he argued that the truth of the facts stated justified their publication. The judge instructed the jury that truth is not a justification for libel. Rather, the judge argued, truth makes the libel more vicious because public unrest is more likely to follow claims that are true, rather than false claims of the corruption of the government. And since the defendant admitted to the fact of the publication, only a question of law remained. So the judge said the issue of law was for him alone to determine and so he instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty. (Sound familiar?)

It took only ten minutes for the jury to disregard the judge’s instructions and the law that denied Mr. Zenger’s God-given right to free speech and they found him "Not guilty"! They deemed him not guilty of any criminal act, and in so doing charged the law with guilt instead! As a result of that jury’s decision, the freedom of the press became firmly established in the colonies. That's the power of the jury! It was the jury that gave America the freedom of the press.

The jury is our government’s final check in the system of checks and balances. The jury is the people’s last safeguard against unjust laws and arbitrary statutes that serve the interests of the lawmakers and not the people. It was through the veto power of the jury, handing down a "Not guilty" verdict in defiance of unlawful law, that slavery was overturned in state after state before the Civil War, the Salem witch trials were stopped, anti-strike laws were overturned, and Prohibition was brought to an end. The government cannot deprive anyone of life or liberty with man-crafted, God-usurping, artificial laws without the consent of the jury. And the jury may be the last line of non-violent defense of the victims of the Abortion Holocaust in America.

Jury Nullification as a Peaceful Means to Stop Abortion

In declaring men like Mr. Zastrow "Not Guilty", the juror has the power to put a crack in the cruel dam that was built in 1973 by the Supreme Court. Just as jury nullification in William Penn’s case opened the door in America to freedom of religion, and in John Peter Zenger’s case opened the door to the freedom of the press, so a "Not Guilty" verdict in trials in which pro-lifers are being charged for breaking bad law in order to protect innocent babies from being slaughtered will open the door to the freedom to live, for all Americans, without fear of government-sanctioned slaughter. Just imagine the flood of pro-life rescuers who would shut down the abortion mills with sit-ins if they only had the confidence that the jury of their peers would not punish them for it!

Dear jury. Do you have a problem with fifty million human carcasses filling the landfills of America with the blessing of our government? Then don’t enforce the law that justifies it! The law that condemns Marion Pritchard and Cal Zastrow is not the law that says, "Thou shalt not murder", but the law that says, "You can murder" and "You can't stop it!" For the condemnation of saints like Mrs. Pritchard and Mr.Zastrow falters if the right to life is God-given and inalienable, if there were real human beings being defended, and if the prosecutable activity of Mrs. Pritchard and Mr. Zastrow was calculated to save those innocent people from tyranny's bloody knife. You, the juror, you have the legal power to judge the law, not just the facts. You have the power to halt tyranny, cripple Roe vs. Wade, and save innocent lives from legal annihilation.

Proverbs 24 10. If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. 11. If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; 12. If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall not He render to every man according to his works?

Quotes proving the power of jury nullification:

"Under the character of jurors, the people exercise in person the greatest proportion of judiciary powers." Thomas Jefferson, 1806

"It is not only the juror’s right, but his 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, 1771

"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the facts in controversy." John Jay, first Chief Justice of Supreme Court, 1789

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of the constitution." Thomas Paine

"It is presumed that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision… you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, State of Georgia vs. Brailsford, 1794

"The Jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts." Samuel Chase, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1796

"The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided." Harlan F. Stone, twelfth Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 1941

"The jury has an unreviewable and irreversible power… to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge." U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, 1792

"The pages of history shine on instances of jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge." U.S. vs. Dougherty, 1972, 473 F 2nd, 113, 1139

"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." Marbury vs. Madison, 1803, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176

"Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them." Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436, p. 491

"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 US 425, p. 422

For "the least of these", Patrick Johnston (6/03)