King Alfred had Justice (judge) Cadwine hanged because Cadwine had a man named Hackwy put to death by hanging, without the unanimity of the jury of twelve men. In this case, three jurors pronounced the Not Guilty verdict against nine. Cadwine removed the three and selected three others who would also pronounce ‘guilt’.

In addition to the absolute requirement of unanimity, from these examples we see that jurors require always to be chosen by lot (chance) from the whole body of adult citizens; and that the selection shall be made in some mode that excludes the possibility of choice on the part of the prosecution and government.

To protect all the People against any government bent on injustice, it is the vital principle of Trial by Jury that government legislation shall be subjected to the judgement of a tribunal taken from the whole people indiscriminately, without any choice by the government, and over which choice the government exercises no control. If government can select jurors, it will select those favourable to its prosecutions and enactments, excluding from juries those whom the law treats unjustly. Exclusion of any men and women from eligibility is an illegal selection of those not excluded.

Juries must be randomly chosen in order that they represent diversity of views amongst the people of the country. The Principle of Unanimity combines with the principle that forbids the selection of jurors being influenced or made by any officer of the government. Together, these principles protect minorities and groups from the partisans of a potentially oppressive government which seeks to impose unfair laws.

If the elected body enacts a law which is inconsistent with the People’s sense of justice and fairness, it requires Nullification by Jurors in Trial by Jury (even by a single juror who may be part of a minority race or group unfairly discriminated against by that law). This demonstrates how Trial by Jury is the foundation of all just and legitimate government, and is the active principle of democracy.

The Common Law Trial by Jury guarantees the universal right of individuals to judge the justice of any law that is to be enforced on the people and their peers, so that arbitrary government and bad law are rejected and innocent liberties are preserved. If the Trial is to be fair, it is essential that it be by a jury of peers, a citizen’s social equals. Hence, common law excludes from juries those who would prejudice proceedings, including: A.) those who make statutes and regulations; B.) those who could gain or benefit from the law or its enforcement; and C.) those who are connected in some way with plaintiff or defendant, their objectivity possibly being compromised.

The common law governing jury selection further ensures fairness: the choice is made by discussions and discreet votes of ‘the triers’ themselves (the fellow jurors); never by prosecutors or convenors, i.e. judges. The plaintiff, defendant and their counsel may make representations to the jurors against the inclusion of a particular citizen on the panel of jurors, on the above grounds, A, B and C.

It was explicitly and precisely to counteract arbitrary (i.e. corrupt; tyrannical) government that the protections of Magna Carta, The Great Charter of English Liberties installed "the law of the land" (i.e. common law), the constitutional criteria of democracy "in perpetuity" and "for ever." (See Preamble & Article 63.) Magna Carta has been repeatedly ratified and remains legally in force.

These criteria have been the foundation of compassionate democratic civilisation through the tribulations of a long varied history. Instead of upholding them, abject lawless politicians who comprise our governments now intend their destruction. These democratic protections are as follows:

(i) the right of the Juror to judge on the justice of the law and its enforcement in finding the Verdict in Trial by Jury (i.e. Jury Nullification);
(ii) the citizen’s right to a Trial by a Jury of peers (i.e. social-equals, not trial by government or its employees);
(iii) freedom from arbitrary arrest;
(iv) freedom from arbitrary detention (later known as Habeas Corpus);
(v) equality before the law.

TRIAL BY JURY PUTS LAW AND ORDER
UNDER DEMOCRATIC CONTROL.

Governments at all times trend towards the tyranny of the enforcement of laws in which there is no justice. If they do not progress in this, it is because the constitutional, enforceable democratic control by the Trial by Jury stops them, or because they fear provoking mass reaction, rather than some intrinsic ‘virtue’. As if any further evidence in support of this affirmation were necessary, the entirety of human History and Politics proves the point; and, quoted herein, impartial citizens, judges, chief justices, politicians and presidents concur.

Trial by Jury puts the forces of law and order under democratic control at the point of each and every act of enforcement. Trial by Jury makes every citizen serving as a Juror a Safeguard of Justice and Liberty, reinforcing Democracy. Trial by Jury gives a real degree of protection to good citizens who otherwise are always vulnerable to the brutalities of any state when it becomes venal, or deviates from democracy; or, whenever a prosecutor or judge has a tendency to incompetence or unfairness.

The façade which now replaces Constitutional Trial by Jury, itself demonstrates the unconstitutional character of Western governments, and exposes the illegalities and tyrannical practices routine in process of law within every Western nation today.

By the protections intended under our Constitutions, government may pardon, suspend or moderate sentences; re-trials before a new jury may occur, and appeals take place; but, for every civil, criminal and fiscal instance of accusation, judgement on laws and other citizens’ behaviour is the ordinary citizen’s domain, not that of government. Trial of the accused, not by the government’s employees, but by a Jury of equal fellow citizens (i.e. peers) drawn indiscriminately from the country to have representation of minorities, requiring jurors’ judgement on the law, facts, the admissibility of evidence, the moral intent of the accused, and, with unanimity for condemnation, the fitness of the sentence if any, remains indispensable to, and definitive of, democracy, sine qua non. We forget the lessons of History at our peril.

Knowledge about Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution, of the relevant law and history, combined with comprehension of the nature of Man, produce understanding of how and why the Trial by Jury has been broken down in practice; and of the unconstitutional illegal means by which this devastating dismantlement of Democracy has proceeded: premeditated denial of Trial by Jury’s intended protection of citizens from the enforcement of unjust laws, is the result of unlawful manipulations by government. By the mens rea of great and petty despots undermining citizens’ Trial by Jury, democracy is eroded and eventually utterly ruined. This criminal government activity must be resisted and reversed.

Present-day ruin and loss of Common Law Trial by Jury by the illegal interventions of politicians and judiciary, is symptom and cause of gradual, but terminal, extinction of democracy and the benevolent culture which brought Trial by Jury into being.

The first act of Survival is to become aware: to forestall low motives in politicians and government employees who subvert Trial by Jury, and who thereby destroy the achievements and ascent of our Democratic Fathers.

Without Trial by Jury in place, no dramatic event is required for democracy to be replaced by tyranny: men and women become enslaved by their insouciance to the ambitions, and plight, of others; and by allowing their minds to dwell on distractions. Roman Emperors knew well that sufficient "bread and the games" generally kept populations tranquil and subject to their bloody, capricious rule.

Are wage-slavery and materialism, video-voyeurism, professional ‘sport’ and the owned and controlled mass media, to be the "bread and games" of the Twenty-first Century ? or will good people awaken in time to save Trial by Jury and Western Democracy from the takeover of criminal opportunist arrogation ? No less is at stake. Without Trial by Jury’s curtailment of tyranny, the state permanently offers an arena to the aspiring demagogue. Today, an unelected plutocracy served by self-seeking politicians and an unconscionable judiciary are the reality.

We stand at a similar historical cross-roads to those free Republican Romans whose democratic state at the very height of its power, shortly fell prey to overt autocracy. Unlike them, History gives us the benefit of hindsight. We need not repeat their mistakes. However, in this issue, the majority of the Western population is passive and completely unaware, because people are mentally self-manacled slaves of the newly materialist West. With their minds prepossessed and without a whimper, in the unblissful manipulated servitude of automatons and marionettes, individually, and thus the entire people, capitulates the last turrets of their ascendant culture of millennia, to the enemy within.

Judged by the universally accepted civilised standards of the common law, the West, now bereft of genuine Trial by Jury, is in a state of degenerative ‘free fall’ (see "A Closer Look;" Part Six of THE REPORT OF THE FCDAE ISBN 9781902848167). The mass of people will only realise that this was so, too late, on destructive impact if it hits bottom. But inertia can be overcome: the trend may be reversed immediately by re-establishment of particular cultural attitudes and practical procedures, at the core of which is Trial by Jury.

Every aware adult understands the threat to their own security and well-being, and realises the paramount necessity for The DEMOCRACY DEFINED RESTORATION Campaign.

GOVERNMENT FAILS THE PEOPLE
IN NOT APPRISING THEM OF
THEIR RIGHTS AND DUTY.

Today, the state education system fails to teach people their most important secular adult duty: that of Juror in Trial by Jury. Hence, the raison d’être and rôle of The DEMOCRACY DEFINED not-for-profit Educational Campaign — jurors educated to their duties do not go wheedling to the judge to ask whether he deigns to grant them the right to their own conscience! and begging ‘permission’—when it is their legal and moral DUTY to judge on the justice of enforcement. In court, they do not cowtow when the judge misinstructs them, or tries to bully, or deny them their Rights and Duty to judge the law... Always remember the example of the upstanding citizens who set the standard for all jurors and trials, in the Penn and Mead case. Ref. The Commemorative Plaque (see The Democracy Defined Campaign Philosophy page 2).

It is incumbent upon aware citizens to rectify the criminal status quo: there are countless trials-by-the-judge, i.e. false ‘trials by jury’, which are the modern corrupted activity of misgovernment where jurors do not know of, and are not instructed by the judge to do their duty to judge the law, the facts, on the admissibility of evidence, on the moral intent of the accused (i.e. malice aforethought, if any), and on the suitability of the sentence, if applicable.

It is encouraging to observe that, in a variety of cases where the evidence against the defendant(s) has been overwhelming and irrefutable, but where the ‘law’ is inequitable, unfounded (the manifestation of ulterior [i.e. covert, illegal] money-motive), and its prosecution an opprobrious disgrace, there are also ACQUITTALS by responsible juries, which are examples of Jury Nullification. Such acquittals do not receive veracious media coverage pointing out the Jurors’ duty of Nullification where appropriate.

Since pre-historical time immemorial, juries of European people from all backgrounds, some literate, others not, have agreed on and enforced common law in the Trial by Jury, against injustices of all types: tyranny, murder, rape, bodily harm, mental cruelty, torture, robbery, theft, extortion, arbitrary dispossession, fraud, and so on. It serves the interest of the individual citizen and the People at large to do so. That is to say, the People reliably enforce just laws; and, only laws which are just, are those which should and must be enforced. (Even and especially the covert undiscovered felon called to serve on a jury, enforces the just laws, for not to do so would reveal his unsalubrious character to the other jurors.)

However, if the justice of a law is not evident, and (being part of the law) the sentence of punishment cannot be accepted as justifiable and fair by twelve indiscriminately chosen adult citizens, then that ‘law’ is no law at all: it requires Jury Nullification and must not be enforced. Viz. Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, quoted in Campaign Philosophy page 1. When juries regularly reject (nullify) prosecutions of a statute, that statute requires legislative expunction.

See the ruling of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969:

With Trial by Jury holding sway, the People are served, not ruled, by governments, whose laws count for naught unless they be just. Such government then cannot but embody truly democratic ideals and civilised aspirations. This type of government attracts, and is comprised of, representative democratic citizens; and no tyrant can attain power.

At the behest of juries of ordinary citizens, the state is constrained into enforcing only just principles and democratic attitudes which accord with the People’s judgement, such as those represented by common law: fraternity, liberty, egalitarianism, progress and justice.

By the diligent upholding of this Constitution, all tyranny is pre-empted before it can take hold. Not only are bureaucratic and fiscal injustices eliminated, but tyrants, great and petty, are emasculated. This enforceable democratic control by the People was emplaced to extend equally over the historic (and any current) ‘religious’ tyrannies, as to secular, which are suffered under man’s inhumanity to man.

Thus, Constitutional Democracies founded on the Common Law Trial by Jury respond to, but cannot initiate, aggression, including wars so-defined. If Trial by Jury had remained operating throughout the European nations, whence it originated, the Hohenzollern and Hitler tyrannies would have been truncated, and the Holocaust and both World Wars averted.

Quotation from THE REPORT ISBN 9781902848167:

Constitutional Common Law Trial by Jury is the foundation and unique Safeguard of Democracy. This Justice System is indispensable to liberty and the well-being of people everywhere. This is the only constitution worthy of the name.