I had attended a rally a few years ago hosted by a Group called BRASS ROOTS, the rally was intended to gather signatures for petitioning the new CCW laws that are available to Citizens of Michigan, somewhere along the line someone made a comment that went " it's better to be judged by 12, then carried by six" . Of course at the time that meant in the context of self defense, it was better to arm and defend yourself, and then be judged by your peers, rather than being a victim and carried away in a coffin.Judged by your peers,.......... from that moment forward I realized that we have a special system in this country, it has it's flaws, but can you name anything devised by man that does not ?
This topic of course is big news today because of Casey Anthony and her trial. If there is one thing I have come to trust it would be to accept the wisdom of 12 independent minded people who sit on a jury. There is no doubt in my mind that the system that is letting her go free of murder ( as of yet there are charges waiting to be sentenced for ) is the fairest system we can devise to protect innocence in this country. I can recall a saying that goes " tis better to let 10 guilty men go free, than to harbor one innocent man to prison". If we were to adopt a system of professional jurists in this country we would then subject ourselves to an entrenched bureaucracy of whom would be quite comfortable with judges, prosecutors, even police, with that kind of familiarity what chance does an innocent person have against a Leviathan that has the sole discretion of power in our society ? With a system of professional Jurists how do you maintain a system of " Innocent until proven guilty" ?
We could trace a multitude of court cases in our history and show that juries have made " mistakes" ( according to how we see the evidence ourselves ) but would that then demonstrate the correct premise of a government Jury system ? Would those mistakes as some would like to define them, demonstrate a necessity to take away the right, the absolute duty of citizenship to participate in a Jury ? Hardly; for that gives credence to a false premise, the premise of the benevolence of government. Any right a government gives, it can take away, the Citizen Jury system is the final check and balance to that. The power, an absolute and undeniable power the citizenry has in that jury box, tells the government they have permission to proceed with their monopoly on power, or on the other hand, completely strips the government of all of it's power over it's citizens. Would we trade that, for a Professional Jury system, I hope, I pray we never do that in this country, it is the epitome of " We The People " as far as I am concerned.
I know that there is a small child in Heaven who is standing next to God looking up with a smile on her face. I see them holding hands and walking in peace among the clouds. There is no justification for the brutal death of that young girl. Period. Listening to the radio this morning and reading a few news accounts, from what I have determined someone made a huge mistake yesterday, but I was not on that Jury, chances are none of you were either. We have a wonderful system, it puts the absolute burden of proof onto the government, that burden of proof must be beyond reasonable doubt. It is our job as citizens to make sure that the proof is just that, beyond reasonable doubt. if a jury of our peers do not feel that the Prosecutor meet that criteria, then at best we must accept that the intentions of the jury was in the best interest of the loss of a truly innocent life, and also in preventing the loss of liberty of another life. In the end God Almighty will be the final judge.
In the end if we are to preserve our world of liberty, then the jury system we have is the final guarantee of that system.
For further reading on this please follow these links:
http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/jury/moreinfo/dialoguepart1.authcheckdam.pdf
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/node/35
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0511d.pdf
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