Jury Nullification Advocate Faces Indictment
February 25th, 2011Via: New York Times:
There was, in fact, nothing wrong with Mr. Heicklen, 78, who eventually opened his eyes and told the judge, “I’m exercising my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.”
Indeed, it was not his silence that landed Mr. Heicklen, a retired Penn State University chemistry professor, in court; it was what he had been doing outside the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street.
Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience.
That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He is to appear in court on Friday for a conference in his case.
Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.
But he feels his message must be getting out, or the government would not have brought charges against him.
“If I weren’t having any effect, would they do this?” said Mr. Heicklen, whose former colleagues recall him as a talented and unconventional educator. “You don’t have to be a genius to figure this thing out.”
Research Credit: JM
The implications of this are chilling. It confirms my suspicion that prosecutors and judges do not want informed, or even intelligent, people serving on juries. Ignorant and uninformed individuals are easy to sway with staged evidence, dramatically orchestrated testimony, and fancy legal terms by prosecutors and judges. As far as juror tampering, anyone who does anything to inform another individual about their rights and responsibilities as jurors runs the risk of prosecution, as anyone may be called to be a juror at any time. Since the jury system is secretive, one would never know whether or not another person is or is not serving on a jury.