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DEMOCRACY DEFINED I.
IS YOUR COUNTRY A DEMOCRACY OR IS YOUR GOVERNMENT A DESPOTISM ? II. ARE YOU A FREEPERSON OR SLAVE ? At our request, John went to the Old Bailey to get a photo for us of this historic monument: the Plaque commemorating the upholding by Jurors and the Chief Justice, of the pan-Occidentally, Constitutionally-recognised Sovereignty of the Individual Juror. By definition, Trial by Jury installs ordinary Citizen-Jurors as the Supreme Legislature and Supreme Judicature. This gives embodiment to the Juror’s Duty (amongst the other Jurors’ Duties) and the Juror’s Right to judge the justice of the law and every act of enforcement, and to annul acts of arbitrary or malevolent governance, tyranny, judicial injustice or incompetence, by pronouncing Not Guilty the abused innocent citizen, accused under malicious, unfounded, crime-engendering, partisan or inequitable legislation. The Plaque celebrates Trial by Jury, the only (peaceful) means known to humankind for eliminating crimes, both common, and those crimes committed by government. Never let it be forgotten that throughout the History of the World right up to date, ALL the greatest CRIMES have been and are being perpetrated by, and in the name of, government. Thank you, John, we remember you, true champion of Liberty and Equal Justice. III. ILLEGAL "SELECTION" OF JURORS. IV. WHY THE LEGAL PROFESSION CANNOT DEFEND YOU. V. WHAT IS THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN ? VI. GET ACTIVE - JOIN
THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN. ACTIVIST MEMBERS from all walks of life in THE CAMPAIGN PHILOSOPHY Excerpt from EIS#10, We the People And the Matter of Words. It is definitive of a civilised society that government recognises as legal, the right of the people to live free from tyranny and enslavement: that is, tyranny and government oppression are recognised as illegal. To deter government which might have criminal objectives, this freedom requires to be secured by the threat of and when necessary the use of legal force. If no legal right exists to uphold liberty and resist illegal oppression from government and its employees, then liberty itself is not legal. If the law does not recognise and support the legal right of the people to resist lawlessness and oppression by anyone, including government, then justice and liberty are denied. A government which judges for itself which laws are to be enforced, will impose all of those laws it chooses. However, some or all of its measures may be contrary to the legitimate interests and liberty of citizens. For this reason, it is necessary to have a tribunal independent of government, with power over government, to judge between the government’s enforcement of laws and those people who would resist such laws. The tribunal must be comprised of the people of the country at large who it represents, on whom the laws are to be enforced, for the purpose of ascertaining which of the laws are justly enforceable on the people, and which laws are to be nullified and expunged. Such a unique tribunal is the Trial by Jury. A government bent on injustice will always commit such offences as it pleases, and act tyrannically unless it is faced with the fully effective deterrent of authorised legal resistance. Hence, to preserve justice, liberty and uphold a legal rule of law, the Trial by Jury tribunals of the people require at their disposal the full forces of law and order. If government denies Trial by Jury, that is, if juries are forbidden from judging between the government’s laws and those citizens who disobey or resist the oppressions of government, then government has absolute power, and the people are ‘legally’ enslaved by government. As with many slaves past and present, by demonstrations of courage they might to some degree hold back their overlords and state officials who are their masters, but they are nonetheless slaves under the law. In this situation, the people have no power to judge over what they perceive to be the criminal actions of despotic government. Such government has the power to decide exactly what a person can say, do or be. The life, liberty, and property of every citizen is entirely in the hands and at the disposal of the statist* politicians in power. A government that can enforce its laws without appealing for consent from a tribunal which represents the people on whom the laws are to be enforced, is an absolute government dictatorship and is not accountable to the people. It can perpetuate its power and commit atrocities at its pleasure. Trial by Jury was emplaced to counter such abhorrence. Following implementation of Trial by Jury, government cannot execute any laws by punishing violators unless it first receives consent of “the country,” that is, the people, through a unanimous jury. Thus, Trial by Jury protects all the people equally and in a democracy the people at all times keep their liberties in their own hands and never surrender them to the government even for a moment. THE PENN AND MEAD
EXPERIENCE... The DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN strives for the re-implementation and Universal Adoption of the Citizens’ legal Right and Duty as a Juror to judge on the justice of law and every act of enforcement; and to annul the enforcement of bad laws and all injustices against citizens by finding the Not Guilty Verdict. The power, right and duty of jurors to decide the verdict according to their convictions and conscience has been established in common law Trial by Jury since time immemorial; at least since the beginnings of the Trial by Jury Justice System in the pre-historical mists of antiquity. In the pursuit of justice and the eternal combat against crime from whatever source, the Juror’s Annulment of the enforcement of the unjust laws of bad governance, of the prejudices, corruption or incompetence of judges, and of wrongful prosecutions, is a fundamental purpose and definitive part of Trial by Jury. Consider the following. The Hellenic Athenian Constitution of government by Trial by Jury was a conspicuous landmark in human history for constitutionally establishing the Trial by Jury mode of justice. To recapitulate the facts, the aristocrat Cleisthenes is to be credited with the creation of mankind’s first democracy in 508/7 B.C.E. He brought acknowledgement to the need to spread empowerment throughout society in order to promote equal justice, liberty, peace and prosperity, by devolving power to all citizens (the males), including the poorest, the thetes, by recognising their inherent human rights, exousia. Exousia rights included the right to attend, debate and vote in the national assembly on laws and measures (referenda); the right of the accused to a Trial by Jury; and, crucially, the empowerment of citizens by bestowing on them JUDICIAL AUTHORITY in the TRIAL BY JURY in which laws and measures passed by legislatorial majorities in the assembly could be judged, overruled and annulled* whenever this was deemed by the Jurors necessary to serve justice, liberty, and the interests of the people. Later, England’s King Alfred, 871 - 899, recognised and upheld the established right and duty of jurors to find the verdict according to their judgement. (See section on Alfred in section entitled The Illegal Selection of Jurors; Campaign Philosophy Page Three.) Significantly, Conrad, Emperor of Germany, installed Trial by Jury two centuries before Magna Carta (see 3, Blackstone, p. 350). Crabbe: “It cannot be denied that the practice of submitting causes (suits-at-law) to the decision of twelve men was universal among all the northern tribes (of Europe) from the very remotest antiquity.” Similarly, and later still in 1215, Article 39 of Magna Carta’s first of many enactments and ratifications affirmed that government may only proceed with acts of enforcement, following, and according to, the judgement and sentence of the pares (or peers; i.e., the jurors); the social equals of the accused. The Duty of Jurors to decide the verdict according to their convictions had long been and remained firmly established. Millar, writing of the times of King Edward the First, 1272-1307, shows how the jurors are the judges in Trial by Jury: "What is called the petty [or petit] jury was therefore introduced into these tribunals (the King’s Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer) as well as into their auxiliary courts employed to distribute justice in the circuits; and was thus rendered essentially necessary in determining causes of every sort, whether civil, criminal, or fiscal." Governments and their servitors bent on injustice begin their crimes by perverting and obstructing the course of justice by interfering with the jury and the proper functioning of Trial by Jury. Illegal statutes of ‘attaint’ dating from as early as the Twelfth Century were from time to time tyrannically passed and utilised to punish jurors for pronouncing annulment verdicts which displeased government, judges and prosecutors. Later still, because disinterested jurors are always wont to annul and dismiss unjust prosecutions, the Court of Star Chamber was an illegal, unconstitutional court set up to enforce despotic monarchs’ will over their political opponents, and any who disputed their lawless acts and corrupt justices (judges). Such cases show that citizens generally do find verdicts according to their conscience and convictions, and dismiss unjust prosecutions. This correct activity comes naturally to jurors and is the longstanding process for combating crime expected of Trial by Jury and for which it is constitutionally emplaced throughout the civilised world "in perpetuity." Common law juries know that they are there to protect themselves and their fellow citizens by enforcing the just laws with unanimity and annulling injustices (see previous page for explanation of why this is a reliable phenomenon of justice). The criminal acts and attaint of despotic governments which interfered in the annulment function of Juries comprise evidence to the fact that the right and duty of jurors to decide the verdict according to their beliefs and convictions were always established in common law Trial by Jury and continuously put into practice. Note that these issues and events long predate the Penn and Mead trial of 1670. Rather than "establishing" the duty and right of Jurors to decide the verdict according to their convictions (as the wording goes on the Old Bailey Commemorative Plaque), in fact, Chief Justice Vaughan’s ruling merely recognised this perpetually requisite citizen’s duty definitive of Trial by Jury. LET THOSE WHO FRAME, ADOPT OR ARE PAID PARTICIPANTS IN THE
LONG-PROVEN TYRANNICAL, FALSE JUSTICE SYSTEM OF Government does not ‘grant’ or ‘bestow’ the right and power to do justice: upholding justice is the inherent duty of every citizen. The universal supreme secular common law recognises and provides for the fact that the people have an eternal obligation to enforce common law and protect themselves from lawlessness and injustices inflicted by criminals who acquire positions of power or government. The universal and supreme secular morality of natural, and of the traditional pan-European Legem Terræ Common Law (as expressed in Article 61 of Magna Carta), installs the People in perpetuity as the legal force to police, arrest, indict, try, punish and otherwise obtain redress over wrongdoers acting as, or in the name of, government. Never let it be forgotten that throughout the History of the World right up to date, ALL the greatest CRIMES have been and are being perpetrated by, and in the name of, government. CHIEF JUSTICE VAUGHAN’S HISTORIC RULING. Chief Justice Vaughan’s ruling explains how it is never possible for those outside the jury to ascertain by what private thoughts or evidence a Juror or Jurors may decide that the verdict of Not Guilty is the only one which is just and appropriate. Any law student worth his salt knows this exemplary historic ruling and understands why this must be so. Whilst outside of the jury situation, adults behave (whether fairly to others or not) according to what they consider to be in their interests; within the jury, when disinterested citizens know the facts from which a verdict is to be inferred, they arrive at the same conclusion or verdict unless there is reasonable doubt ceded by the inconclusive nature of the evidence, or injustice in the law or the act of its enforcement. One of the beauties of authentic Common Law Trial by Jury is the predictability of its verdicts. Indeed, this it is which explains why courts (judges) today breach Trial by Jury’s common law governing impartial jury selection (as described herein) and go out of their way to ‘select’ jurors (voir dire) who will "produce" the verdict by which government prosecutors can enforce venal, crime-producing and wholly illegal legislation. However, in the European Union, Trial by Jury is denied altogether. These criminal activities by participants in government (soviétique executive, the legislatures and judiciary) devastate democracy, obliterating civilisation in favour of barbaric statist despotism. This initiates the newest gulag state. These government Crimes against Humanity deny equal justice and incarcerate multitudes of innocent citizens. N.B. As noted, no malice aforethought; no mens rea: NOT GUILTY... THE RIGHT OF JURORS TO JUDGE Photo: The late John Gouriet, Major, 15th/19th Hussars. Chairman, Defenders of the Realm; Battle for Britain Campaign supported by The Duke of Wellington; Edward Fox, OBE, and Frederick Forsyth, CBE. At our request, John went to the Old Bailey to get a photo for us of this historic monument to humankind’s universal right to, and aspiration for, Freedom and Equal Justice. (See the account in the Index above.) Thank you, John, true champion of Liberty and Equal Justice.
Penn was later Founder of Pennsylvania. For ease of reading, here is a transcription of the Plaque: "Near this site William Penn and William Mead were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Grace Church Street. This tablet commemorates the courage and endurance of the Jury, Thos (Thomas) Vere, Edward Bushell and ten others who refused to give a verdict against them although locked up without food for two nights and were fined for their final Verdict of Not Guilty." "The case of these Jurymen was reviewed on a writ of Habeas Corpus and Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the Court which established The Right of Juries to give their Verdict according to their Conviction." Jurors do not decide the Verdict simply on whether evidence indicates a person "broke the law." Quakers Penn and Mead broke the law in letter and spirit in front of very numerous witnesses. The Penn and Mead infraction was knowing and intentional. The facts of the case were known to all: judge, jury and the public. Furthermore, there was no desire in the defendants to deny their brave stand. Their outspoken behaviour at trial indicated the converse. The evidence against them was incontrovertible. What the defendants disputed was ‘guilt’: that is to say, they were Not Guilty because crime is the committing of an act of injustice with malice aforethought. It is not simply the act of breaking the law, for the unjust law is itself the embodiment of crime and, as we shall see hereinafter, the upholding or enforcing of any unjust law is a criminal act per se; and recognised as such by domestic and international law. Latterday lawyers’ and others’ erroneous accounts of this case which are intended to undermine the right to, to efface the value of, and to deny the necessity for, Annulment-by-Jury (also known as Jury Nullification) evade, or are in ignorance of the religio-political circumstances surrounding it. The King was not only Head of State but Supreme Head of the Established Protestant Church of England. Following Europe and England’s centuries of ‘religious’ wars and strife, the Church was in favour of and intended the most extreme castigation (decapitation or auto-da-fé, i.e., burning alive at the stake) of adherents such as Quakers to "heretical religions." In religious matters, the Church could not be disputed. For Chief Justice Vaughan to have made an outright declaration or even an allusion to or recognition of the ‘possibility’ that the Jury in the Penn and Mead case could have annulled the prosecution on the grounds that the law was "unjust" would have earned him the executioner’s blade. It also would have set back the cause of religious freedom, which most educated people had at last come to adopt. Yet, in view of firstly, the absolute irrefutability of the evidence; secondly, the defendants’ defiant declamatory demands from the dock for independence of conscience; and thirdly, the intense hostility of the Church to even the slightest dissent, to allow the acquittal to stand was blatantly to confront the injustice and tyranny of the law. The Chief Justice’s upholding of the acquittal was acknowledged throughout the land and the Colonies as a sensational and supremely courageous act, especially given his proximity to the sanguivolent chief representatives of the Church. By his act, Chief Justice Vaughan upheld the jury’s Duty to acquit regardless of the law or the instructions of the judge, if the finding of a verdict of ‘guilty’ would be unjust to the accused. Exemplified by the above well-known instance, when the trial is by jury the Jury’s Right to acquit when it perceives that conviction or punishment would be an injustice, supersedes in authority the government and court. This event in particular and the Principle embodied in the Mechanism of Judgement and Annulment by Jury in general, confirm in the minds of the discerning that the pan-European Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury, subsequently prescribed and defined by Constitutional law Magna Carta in 1215 (ratified repeatedly), and constitutionally installed throughout the West and adopted by numerous other countries, is the finest and only legitimate Justice System ever devised. For example, in explicit recognition of such universally applicable, timeless, secular, ideal and moral principles, likewise, the U.S. Constitution enshrines Trial by Jury as the sole legitimate Justice System for all (non-impeachable) crimes; viz. Article III; Section Two. THE ENEMY WITHIN. As noted, all societies govern by their Justice System. The power to punish carries with it ALL power. If at any time, albeit for an instant, the Supreme Power is removed from or ceded by the people, and the power is acquired by, or delegated to, a group consisting of LESS than all the People, then the democratic state has ceased to exist: an undemocratic government, that is, a despotism, has assumed its place. The Trial by Jury-based democratic society of the Hellenic ideal was implemented all over the world by the peoples of republics and constitutionally-controlled monarchies -- but democracy has repeatedly suffered destruction by the countervailing incursions of despots who brought about the annihilation of genuine Constitutional Trial by Jury. Stealthily, again today the enemy of the people has taken hold of the Supreme Power and obliterated Western civilisation from within, without a whimper from the majority of the people who have literally everything to lose in terms of life, liberty and property from totalitarian governments’ denial of Trial by Jury. The history of mankind can suitably be described as the account of an unending struggle between democratic civilisation and the primitive barbarity of despotism. It must be remembered that Trial by Jury is democracy’s Mechanism of Authority by which all the rights of all the People are protected by the People themselves, and on which all rights depend. When common law Trial by Jury was constitutionally installed as the sole Justice System for all crimes (other than impeachable), the authors and signatories of Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution were establishing states of democracy; shining examples to the World. The jury’s definitive democratic power to reject and annul bad law continues to be recognised, as in the 1972 ruling of the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals: "The jury has an unreviewable and
irreversible power to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge.
The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to
disregard instructions of the judge." WHEN THE GOVERNMENT TURNS TO CRIME. Whenever and wherever the Supreme Power has been in the hands of the People, those undemocratic individuals who would seek to take this power for themselves and their partisans, first wrest it from the Citizen-Jurors and illegally suppress the Trial by Jury. This they do through willing, beholden henchmen, their employees: the judiciary. The judges overawe and misinstruct naïve citizen-jurors: they deny jurors their function and right to judge, and explicitly forbid them their duty to annul the enforcement through the courts of bad laws. In sum, the Justice System is perverted by criminals to serve the interests of criminals. The Penn and Mead case exemplifies how, for all time, Democracy and civilisation itself rely utterly on ordinary citizens having ultimate control of the Justice System. Furthermore, the case sets an example for today, not only to Jurors but also to citizens in judicial and magisterial positions in tribunals everywhere: In finding a Verdict, everyone is duty-bound to judge both the justice of the law, and on whether the behaviour of the accused was of mens rea, i.e. guilt or criminal intention, without which no crime can have been committed. (See section on mens rea; "Guilty ?" or "Not Guilty ?" which follows.) In the Penn and Mead trial, jurors found not the defendants, but the law wanting. Enforcement of injustice by state personnel is an illegal punishable act: cf. Crime Against Humanity; ratified Principles; 12-10-1946; International law; cf. the Nuremberg Precedent. For Justice to prevail throughout the world, Trial by Jury is universally requisite. It is for the ordinary people at large represented by indiscriminately chosen adult citizens as jurors, to judge the justice of every contested act of law enforcement in finding the Verdict. At this point, one of the many aspects of the infinite superiority of the People’s Courts of the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury Justice System is established over the crude tyrannical system of trial-by-judge and enforcement-by-government-judges... As the paramount democratic Safeguard of the ordinary people against those in government intent on doing injustice, the jury is the only extra-governmental body, i.e., outside of government and its employees, constitutionally-emplaced to judge the law and every act of enforcement. Bearing in mind that no government ever conceded that the laws it enforces could be "unjust," this makes the jury’s judgement on the justice or otherwise of the law, the only true democratic testing of the law. "The Jury has the Right to determine both the law and facts."U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Samuel Chase; Signatory to the Declaration of Independence. Today, judges feloniously continue still to misinstruct juries to find a ‘guilty verdict’ without the jurors making a judgement as to whether doing so would be unfair to the accused. Be it well understood: Whether instructed to do so by the judge or not, whenever a juror convicts a person who, according to the juror’s conscience has not committed any wrongdoing with malice aforethought, that juror thereby commits a crime. The juror abets the Crime of Malicious Prosecution by the state: a criminal injustice occurs (cf. Crime Against Humanity). Consider that there are numerous statutes, the breach of which may occur without any guilt, crime or malice aforethought on the part of the citizen. Those in power tend to assert as ‘legislation’, their inclinations whatever they be, however venal, arbitrary, and illegitimate. It is for this very reason that those who agree to abide by the laws, the mass of ordinary people, have the duty in Trial by Jury of judging the laws and acts of enforcement, and where necessary, annulling laws and acts of enforcement which are contrary to the sense of justice, the conscience, of the Juror. Jurors are ignorant, servile and morally wrong if they convict against their conscience—but, above all, in so doing they commit a crime; they strike a blow against democracy and the people; and they defile the Constitutional Trial by Jury Justice System. To convict someone Not Guilty of any wrongdoing is one of the most serious crimes it is possible to commit. This is the obsequious behaviour complicit in tyranny which drives politicians and judges to become confidently despotic beyond restraint. It is a pathway fraught with the milestones of civil strife, oppression, misery, injustice, crime and brutality, the road ultimately to genocidal holocaust. ENFORCEMENT OF INJUSTICE At all times, every adult person has the moral responsibility to suppress injustice. Every act of injustice is a common law crime, whether committed by private citizens or by the state. Jurors and government employees alike are accountable. See ratified Principles, U.N. Resolution, 12-10-1946: PRINCIPLE I: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible and liable to punishment." PRINCIPLE II: "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not release the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law." PRINCIPLE III: "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law." PRINCIPLE IV: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to the order of his government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." Whether by participation in the enforcement of arbitrary legislation, or from the following of direct orders, being party to the execution of injustice makes the person involved liable to punishment for a grave criminal offence (cf. Crime Against Humanity). In the Trial by Jury context, the moral choice quoted above is ALWAYS "possible;" it is definitively obligatory: the "choice" is mandatory. De jure, under pain of penalisation, all those involved at every stage of the creation, maintenance and enforcement of law, including jurors, must make the moral choice and judge the law, and accordingly take the appropriate action or make the apposite decision. Where before jurors swore simply to "convict the guilty and acquit the innocent," nowadays, in breach of common law governing Trial by Jury, governments and judiciaries have changed jurors’ terms, requiring them to swear to enforce "the law" as it is interpreted or dictated by the judge to the jury. Jurors are misinstructed that they may not judge upon the law. However, as noted, government is thereby in breach of correct due process and contravenes the duty of the juror to do justice, and denies Trial by Jury itself. Furthermore, acting pursuant to the scurrilous requirements of renegade government or judge and not making that judgement as to whether the law or its enforcement would embody injustice to the accused, would be in gross breach of natural, common, constitutional and international laws, and constitutes a judicable criminal abetment of tyranny; cf. the Nuremberg Precedent. TRIAL BY JURY IS INIMITABLE. Citizen-Juries educated and instructed to judge on the justice of law and its enforcement, can be relied upon to protect people from the state, when the state breaches correct behaviour in attempting to enforce injustices. It is for this reason that those who stand to gain money and/or power from tyranny by the imposition of unjust ‘laws’, regard the genuine Trial by Jury as an obstacle to be undermined and destroyed. Untrustworthy at best, of outright criminal intent at worst, are those who, instead of restoring Common Law Trial by Jury to its true form, would discard it altogether... Viz. for example, U.S. politicians ruining the People’s exemplary U.S. Constitutional rights to Habeas Corpus protection and Trial by Jury for all criminal and fiscal lawsuits, under the terms inflicted by the unpatriotic Patriot Act and other illegal legislative and regulatory interventions. Viz. for example, British politicians’ illegal and
unconstitutional intervention to deny the right to a Trial by Jury for de facto innocent
persons accused under numerous categories of venal* governments’ fabricated
‘offences’; see THE REPORT ISBN 9781902848167. Viz. for example, the antidemocratic commissars and politicians of the European Union malevolently installing the d’Estaing "European Constitution," overriding the wishes of the People as expressed in both referenda and polls. This specious charter imposes the prejudiced, corrupt system of trial-by-judges and denies Trial by Jury altogether. Legislators and judges are exposed to all the temptations of money, fame and power, to induce them firstly, to overlook and deliberately disregard justice in the framing, passing, interpreting and enforcing of legislation; and secondly, to become actively biased between contesting litigants, causing politicians and judges to sell the rights and interests, and violate the liberties of the People. Jurors are exposed to none of these temptations. Jurors are not liable to bribery, for they are unknown to the contesting parties until they come into the jury-box. To preclude subornment and intimidation, Jurors’ identities may be kept unrevealed to the public, and, if so decided by the Jurors, the trial may be held "in camera" (i.e., in private, with transcripts made available thereafter). Further, the laws of human nature do not permit the supposition that twelve adult men and women taken by lot (indiscriminately) from the mass of the people, will all prove dishonest. (Common law requires Unanimity* to pronounce a guilty verdict.) *See the Constitutional Common Law recognised and instituted by King Alfred the Great, 871-899 C.E., in regard to the Principles of Unanimity, Impartiality and Random Selection of Jurors in Trial by Jury; Campaign Philosophy webpage Three. Jurors can hardly gain fame, power or money by giving erroneous decisions. Their office as juror is temporary. They know that when they have executed it, they must return to everyday life and they rely on all their rights being upheld by the judgements of jurors who will be their successors, and to whom they are an example. This Trial by Jury Justice System is unique and inimitable: that is, it cannot be equalled by other legal arrangements. It places a curb on legislation the enforcement of which the Citizen-Juror adjudges would be unfair and tyrannical; and a Jury ensures to us—what no other court does—that first and indispensable requisite in a judicial tribunal: integrity. The powers of juries not only place a curb on the powers of legislators and judges, but also imply an imputation on their integrity, impartiality and trustworthiness. These are the reasons why legislators and judges have harboured the most intense hatred for juries, and, so fast as they could do it without alerting the People to the loss of their liberties, have now destroyed juries’ power to judge on justice issues, and with it the Trial by Jury. The self-proclaimed Western bastions of ‘democracy’ are illusory. That which militaristic tyranny and the Twentieth Century’s Great Wars of Aggression failed to ruin, is destroyed inimically from within by parasitic individuals of insidious government. Whenever and wherever Trial by Jury is not in place, or it is allowed by the insouciance of the population to be interfered with by government and its representatives, there tyranny and crime inevitably prevail. Hence, from ideals as well as bitter experience, the (Western) tradition of Judaeo-Christian morality and the timeless, universal secular natural common laws of Equity and Justice teach that Democracy, id est, the control by ordinary people of every aspect of government, is to be favoured over, and when necessary fought for in resistance to, the foible of humans established in authority always to suppress the Freedom of others. The only (peaceful) means known to mankind by which government can be held to the Principles of Liberty and Equal Justice is the Constitutional Trial by Jury Justice System. Nowadays, amongst other unlawful interventions on those occasions when it purports to take place, Trial by Jury is precluded by judges’ forbidding jurors from judging on equity issues, on the justice of the law and its enforcement. The courts’ current illegal modus operandi is to facilitate the tyranny manifest in the judiciary’s antidemocratic enforcement of inequitable statutes and regulations, which otherwise citizen-jurors en masse would emphatically annul. The motive behind, and explanation for, judges’ boundless treachery are the same today as they have always been, and they confirm that the indispensability of Trial by Jury is eternal: The judiciary is responsible, not to the People, but to the government; judges are dependent for careers, salaries and by impeachment, on the legislature: to remain judges, they must reliably enforce unjust legislation. Judges regard themselves as, and are, bound to enforce the laws, even when doing so is an act of extreme injustice. Once a law has been passed and interpreted for enforcement by the courts, then, unlike jurors, in the routine of court cases judges are not permitted to dispute or judge the justice of law and its enforcement. To allow these compromised men and women, judges, to dictate the law utterly surrenders all the liberties, rights, property and money of the People, to the arbitrary will of politicians. Any person who would propose or support such a system of enslavement and subjection of the People, suffers from lack of education and knowledge of human behaviour and political history, or from acute antidemocratic mens rea (criminal intent). The infractions by modern judiciaries of the strictures of the U.S. Constitution and the U.K. Great Charter Constitution, and of universal natural law and justice, and the Common Law, are epitomised, and the injustice of today’s ‘justice system’ is demonstrated by judges’ prevaricative misstatement of law (which they are all too fond of reciting) that "parliament/ congress / or the council (soviet) makes the law, and judges enforce it." Au contraire... ... a just system is the only one that is legal: trial-by-the-government-judge has always been unacceptable to people of probity. Viz. the reasoned advocation of the Common Law Trial BY JURY Justice System, by the chief justices, judges, lawyers and heads of state quoted.Compounding their violation of common law and suffocation of Justice, nowadays, arrant ‘judges’ do not even permit defence lawyers to tell juries that it is a definitive and integral part of the Juror’s function to judge the justice of law enforcement. Thus is Trial by Jury by judges dismembered. The modern judges have judicably corrupted themselves beyond the pale, abetting and participating in abject tyranny with their perverted and inequitable misconstruing and enforcing of money-motivated criminogenic (crime-engendering) legislation. Under the Constitutional Trial by Jury Justice System, Common Law juries (not judges), try, reject or enforce the law. "The law itself is on trial quite as
much as the case which is to be decided." DIFFERENCES. Consider the situation in the light which reveals some of the principal differences between trial-by-judge and the Trial by Jury: Very rarely, retribution may fail to be visited upon a guilty individual, for example, from the incompetent presentation of the evidence to a case, or from an anomalous intrusive subornment of a juror. The plaintiff would not obtain what was his rightful due in this particular instance. That would be an end to the matter. However, with the protections of one’s equal fellow citizens in the genuine Trial by Jury, under unjust laws or malfunctioning courts no injustice is ever inflicted on the innocent accused person because of the juror’s (even a single juror’s) power to ANNUL prosecution. (Including re-Trial on appeal, this represents one dissenting Juror out of twenty-four.) In stark contrast, under trial-by-judge (the system of legislative and judicial authority which today prevails over jurors’ independence thereby destroying and replacing the Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury), injustice is perpetrated in every prosecution under an unjust law. On the judgement, and under the power, of judges, people’s property, liberty or lives can be routinely taken in cruel acts of tyranny. Under the trial-by-judge system, the rights of the whole populace are demolished by the government’s laws thus enforced, and a totalitarian tyranny envelops the entire population placing the mass of the people prostrate at the feet of politicians and judges. In Trial by Jury, if the justice of a law and/or its prosecution is not evident, and a sentence of punishment (being part of the law) cannot be accepted as justifiable and fair by twelve indiscriminately chosen adult citizens, then that ‘law’ is no law at all: its prosecution requires annulment-by-jury (Not Guilty) and it must not be enforced. Yet, such justice cannot be delivered by judges whose binding modus operandi forbids them from disputing the justice and legality of law. Once a law has been passed and interpreted for enforcement by the courts, the judge in the system of trial-by-judge (or tribunal of judges, the ombudsman or appeals’ courts), is neither permitted to dispute the legality of the law nor to produce a verdict according to conscientious judgement on whether the law or its enforcement is just, even when its enforcement is an act of extreme injustice. Whenever a law is passed (for whatever reason) which inflicts injustice, the trial-by-judge becomes an instrument of government oppression. Trial-by-judge is the despot’s weapon. If retribution might sometimes (but very rarely) want of being done in the Trial by Jury Justice System, Chief Justice Vaughan’s ruling recognises the phenomenon long understood and upheld by civilised mankind, that the consciences of a common law jury of twelve form a safer, purer tribunal than those of specially appointed individuals holding permanent offices lucratively remunerated and bound to enforce the government’s legislation. "GUILTY?" OR "NOT GUILTY?" It is an unalterable principle of the common law Trial by Jury inscribed into the Constitution (which forms the Supreme Law by which the executive, legislature, judiciary and all citizens are legally bound) that there can be no crime without there having been mens rea, that is, guilt or malicious criminal intent. Guilt is a personal attribute or quality of the actor. It might not be involved in the act itself but guilt depends on the intent or motive with which the act was committed. The jury must find a person acted from a premeditated malicious criminal motive, mens rea, in order to find him or her guilty. This is the issue the jury try: "guilt," or "not guilty". Malice aforethought is the criterion by which common law defines guilt. Justice can only demand the finding of a guilty verdict and punishment where there has been malicious criminal intent. There is no moral justice nor political necessity (i.e. deterrent value) for punishing where there was no mens rea. (In the case of one person injuring another innocently or accidentally, the civil law suit and the Trial by Jury award appropriate compensation for damages.) Guilt is an intrinsic attribute of actions and motives by which common law defines ‘crime’. Common law Trial by Jury makes malicious criminal intent or guilt a necessity preliminary to conviction. ‘Guilt’ cannot be imparted to an action simply by legislation. This mechanism of the common law Trial by Jury protects (is intended to protect) individuals from governments which have ulterior criminal ends and would seek to further them by making statutory ‘offences’ out of innocent acts which are not crimes. The mechanism can be effective only where the law is not broken by courts and government, and where the Constitution is faithfully upheld: that is, where the Jurors’ rights, duties, powers and functions are fulfilled, and these latter are not illegally denied or interfered with by judges, or by politicians’ legislative contraventions. In Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury, it is the citizen’s Duty to nullify prosecutions of bad laws by dismissing charges against the accused by finding the Not Guilty verdict. Today, as throughout history, whenever this Duty of Anulment by Jury (aka Jury Nullification) is suppressed by courts or despots, it is to serve a criminal, and frequently venal, motive of government and others implicated. Today, politicians and judiciary driven by the ulterior motive, infract Constitutions and common law, and on a routine basis fabricate legislative ‘offences’ out of things which are not and never will be ‘crimes’. Wayward judges’ enforcement of the corrupt, inequitable and perjurious ‘legislation’ then fines, incarcerates and otherwise abuses innumerable hapless innocent citizens whose acts are without guilt and of no criminal intent. The corruption of the modern judiciary is self-evident in judges’ upholding the criminally arbitrary authority of government, by judges actively procuring conviction of individuals for acts innocent in themselves, and the commission of which therefore indicates no criminal intent—but which are ‘forbidden’ by illegal ‘statute’. In flagrant breach of morality and common law, judges routinely abet persecution of innocent people by permitting and participating in prosecutions of these false ‘laws’, simply because not to do so would lose them their job. In all these cases, the citizens involved are due Amnesty and Restitution (as for other Wrongful Penalisation). NOTA BENE:
Ergo: the virulent consequences of government denying or subverting Trial by Jury are predictable, premeditated and inevitable. Today and throughout history, the veracity and accuracy of the aforegoing two statements and derivative logical conclusion are confirmed by the experience. The outcome of governments’ violation and/or denial of Common Law Trial by Jury is that, today, as ever, local and national governments punitively enforce unjust laws and regulations on a routine basis. See TRIAL BY JURY ISBN 9781902848723 for examples of the extreme degree to which arrant modern ‘judges’ enforce injustices. ANNULMENT BY JUROR (NULLIFICATION) IS A PRIVATE DECISION. Jurors do not need to give a reason ever, to any person at any time, for refusing to render a verdict of guilty in the Trial by Jury. The defendant(s) found Not Guilty cannot be tried twice under the same charge. In upholding the acquittal of Quakers Penn and Mead, Chief Justice Vaughan pointed out that the court (trial judge) and the prosecution can never know what evidence or reason is in the juror’s mind by which he (or she) decides. See the wording (above) of the famous Plaque at The Old Bailey Court in London, which commemorates this landmark acquittal. Annulment by Jury is not an ‘argument’ which one presents; nor can it be ‘disallowed’. A Right may be illegally denied and abused, but it is inherent to the life of every man and woman: it is never ‘lost’. One does not articulate Annulment in the court or the jury-room. It is a private decision: the legal and moral responsibility and duty of Citizen-Jurors always to prevent (i.e., nullify) the prosecution of a fellow citizen when conviction or punishment would be unfair. This is done by the Juror pronouncing the Not Guilty Verdict. If, in the privacy of the jury-room, another juror broaches the topic of anulling the prosecution on the grounds of injustice, and if this is indeed the case as many modern ‘laws’ and prosecutions are oppressive [i.e., illegal], then one owes spoken support to that juror. Otherwise, however, discretion is called for, because judges are known to dismiss the jury, pronouncing a ‘mistrial’, after jurors have informed the judge that other jurors have raised the subject of Annulment. In the situation where no other juror seems to be aware of their duty to annul enforcement of unjust laws, jurors can concentrate on the dubious nature of the prosecution witnesses, police, etc., in not finding a guilty verdict. Whenever, according to the conscience of the juror, the law is wrong, i.e., unfounded, venal, inequitable; or whenever the conviction or punishment of the accused would be unfair, it is the juror’s Duty to find the accused Not Guilty—for no one is bound to obey an unjust law—and today there are very numerous unjust statutes. In short, to straighten out our Western and other societies, one must annul the prosecutions of laws which one knows to be bad and unjust: and to do this one has to get selected for the jury. Remember, ‘evidence’ that the accused ‘broke the law’ is irrelevant to the verdict when the law itself is unfair and thus illegal: in these latter circumstances, the only just verdict possible is that of Not Guilty. The educated, good democratic person adopts the overriding legal and moral duty to prevent injustice from being inflicted by the judge on the accused—indeed, the juror is the judge in these matters—he or she does not "ask" a lawyer, a QC or the judge for ‘permission’ to perform the universal duty to uphold justice by annulling bad laws or acts of enforcement. Remember: the enforcement of injustice is always a crime. Lawyers judicably collude for pay, with tyranny and injustice by meekly accepting their being forbidden from informing jurors of their duty to annul bad laws; also see Democracy Defined Campaign Philosophy page 4. Educated citizens are aware that nowadays, the courts (judges) go out of their way premeditatedly to misinstruct Jurors and deny them their proper functions, especially that of judging the justice or otherwise of the law and the act of enforcement. To counter the crimes of antidemocratic modern politicians and judiciary, THE DEMOCRACY DEFINED CAMPAIGN strives for: THE RESTORATION OF TRIAL BY JURY. ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE IN JURY SELECTION, © All rights reserved. |
