Posted on 06/15/2013 8:59:38 AM PDT by Rusty0604
As a result of her reading, she also became deeply troubled by what she now feels was the unnecessary withholding of relevant information from the jury—information that she says would likely have led the jury to acquit Hershberger of the single criminal count of which he was convicted. Hershberger faced a sentencing hearing Thursday at the Baraboo courthouse where he was tried, with a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.
The members of the Hershberger jury were only allowed by the judge to see a redacted version of the hold order issued to Hershberger during a search of his farm and store by state agriculture and public health authorities on June 2, 2010; blotted out were the causes for the hold order.
If they had been able to see the whole document, some members of the jury believe they would have acquitted on all four counts.
Bollfrass-Hopp decided to take matters in to her own hands: she wrote the state judge overseeing the case, Guy Reynolds, expressing her objection to the information blackout
(Excerpt) Read more at modernfarmer.com ...
When we want you to vote on a jury citizen, we will only allow you to hear what we want you to hear, and we will tell you what to think about it first.
and how much money did the government spend on this idiocy
Obama has been hard on small dairy farmers.
Lot’s of them have closed shop.
Too late for this guy. The time for jury nullification is BEFORE conviction.
Provide an honest jury with edited evidence and you get an unjust verdict.
I’ve had judges explicitly inform jury pools that they would NOT TOLERATE any “jury nullification nonsense” in THEIR courts on 2 of the last three times I was called.
On the third occasion Her Honor said that if you didn’t agree with a law, the proper course of action was to get the legislature to change it or to go the initiative process and have the voters change it.
No, they can’t stop it, but they surely can and do discourage it.
By the way, do you happen to know how long a judge can have you jailed on a contempt charge?...
No, you get the verdict you'd decided will be just.
They charge people with a crime that isn’t a crime or they don’t have enough evidence to prove it, and they always throw in an “obstruction of justice” or in this case “violating a holding order”. If the suspect is not found guilty of the main charges, they get them on the made up related charge. (Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart, etc.)
What do they care, it was YOUR MONEY they spent.
Wasn’t a woman locked up for over a year on a contempt charge because of a child custody issue?
Now.... where would our justice system be if we allowed jurors to hear the actual truth?
Listen politely to the Judge and then do whatever the hell you feel is right.
In my jurisdiction, it’s six months unless you have a continuing contempt in which case it’s basically indefinitely.
What a surprise! It’s about TAXES!
Retail permits set you up to collect SALES TAXES.
Dairy permits set you up for inspections by the Department of health and make sure that you pay fees (taxes) for that service.
Government will come after you if you don’t pay your taxes.
They will REALLY come after you if they see you as somebody leading a group of people trying to escape taxes. This farmer fit in to that category.
Jury prevented from seeing all the evidence in Raw Milk Case: Wisconsin vs. the small farmer
FReep Mail me if you want to be on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
FTA: Not only did Judge Reynolds mention the letter, he imposed a fine much smaller than the maximum: $1,000 plus $513 in court costs. And it wasn’t the only letter he received: Judge Reynolds said he received letters from three jurors in support of the farmer and that it was the first time in more than a dozen years on the bench that he had been contacted by jurors seeking leniency or acquittal for the man they had convicted.
When someone tells you “All you need to know is...” the first thing you should do is find out what it is they don’t want you to know and why if you really want to know the truth of the matter.
This needs to happen more often as a plan B. Plan A would be not allowing bogus charges and/or giving jurors all the facts.
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