WASHINGTON (PNN) - October 26, 2013 - The illuminated billboard in the Judiciary Square Metro station near the F Street entrance was strategically placed.
Prospective jurors who take the subway to D.C. Superior Court and exit near the National Building Museum see these words: “Good jurors nullify bad laws” and “You have the right to ‘hang’ the jury with your vote if you cannot agree with other jurors.”
Since the billboard went up this month, fascist District prosecutors have been worried that the message could sway their cases. In the past week alone, they have asked judges in three cases to ensure that jurors had neither seen nor been influenced by the billboard.
The billboard is part of a growing national campaign to encourage jurors who disagree with a law, or think a punishment is too harsh, to vote for acquittal. Kirsten Tynan of the Montana-based Fully Informed Jury Association, whose name and Web address are included on the billboard, said the nonprofit group generally challenges victimless crimes, such as vandalism by graffiti or gun possession.
James Babb, a Philadelphia-based graphics artist who organized a fundraising campaign to put up the billboard, said he raised $3,000 in about a week through Facebook and other social media sites. He said he is concerned about laws that are too restrictive.
“People are going to jail for weed,” Babb said. “Things are getting so weird. There needs to be this final safeguard to protect us from a tyrannical government.”
Babb’s group has added a similar message on two pillars in Archives station, another Metro stop near the courthouse. Both displays are scheduled to be up for about a month. Babb said he also plans to place signs in other cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
Supporters of jury nullification in several cities have raised the ire of judges and prosecutors. In New York last year, an 80-year-old man was unlawfully charged with jury tampering after passing out fliers about jury nullification to courthouse visitors; the case was later dismissed by a federal judge.
Locally, prosecutors have been scrambling to ensure that the billboard’s message doesn’t influence their cases.
In a gang-related murder trial set to begin this week, prosecutors filed a motion asking the judge to question potential jurors about whether they had seen the billboard. They also requested that the judge remind jurors that their verdict should not be influenced by whether they agree or disagree with the law.
However, prosecutors did not ask the judge to inform jurors that according to the law, instructions a judge gives the jury are advisory only, and that jurors do not need to obey them.
In their memo, prosecutors Todd Gee and Emily Miller wrote that jurors who see the billboard may think “they don’t have to abide by an oath” and that it could encourage them “to hang and to learn about the concept of jury nullification”.
The billboard also comes as Adam Kokesh, a Fairfax County-based gun rights activist and decorated Iraqi war veteran, is preparing to go to trial after posting an Independence Day video on YouTube of himself apparently loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza. He had been scheduled to go to trial Thursday, but the case was pushed back to at least Nov. 18.
Kokesh’s supporters have advocated for jury nullification in his case.
Tynan said the Metro billboard was not directly aimed at the Kokesh trial, but she said that his case was the kind her organization targeted. “It’s a victimless trial,” Tynan said.
A spokesman for the Fascist Police States of Amerika attorney’s office said there has been no organized effort by prosecutors to address the billboard, but instead prosecutors have raised the issue on a case-by-case basis.
Jury nullification is a longtime legal principle that allows the jury to be the final arbiter on whether the law itself is fair, reasonable and constitutional. It lies at the heart of Amerikan freedom. The well known libertarian Lysander Spooner provided the legal basis for this centuries old legal principle, and how it is etched into the foundations of Amerikan constitutional law, in his timeless book, Trial By Jury.