“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Thomas Jefferson considered trial by jury as the anchor by which “government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” The method, known as jury nullification, is an essential – and usually ignored – part of any strategy to advance liberty. Path...
Recently, Louisiana prosecutors were forced to drop felony charges against a man after nearly 2 dozen potential jurors balked at criminal charges for illegal possession and none were left in the pool for the day. Whether this is a revolt or a kind of preemptive jury...
An ancient right, the Founders considered the jury trial to be not just essential for liberty, but possibly the most important check on government power. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man by which a...
No matter how much power the federal government may have, when a jury refuses to side with it, the feds lose. In what was effectively a case of jury nullification, jurors declined to return any guilty verdicts against four men involved in the 2014 Bundy Ranch...
In Montana, citizens rendered a marijuana law unenforceable through jury nullification. Recently, a man was arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana, but the judge could not find one single person willing to sit on a jury and convict him. Unable to seat a...
The curious case of Doug Darrell shows the immense amount of power that is possessed by We the People, when we have the courage to use it. Doug Darrell is a resident of New Hampshire who cultivated marijuana for religious and medical purposes. After a National Guard...