Federal SWAT Raid Over . . . Orchids

The Agitator ^ | October 5, 2009

[zeugma]

Almost everyone on FR always complains about jury duty and how to get out of it.....what better way for a citizen to express dissatifaction with unjust laws and thumb their nose at the government....

 I would never try to get out of jury duty. Unfortunately, they don't seem to interested in me. 

[Sender]

Yeah, they only appear dead. Just wait til you leave the house. Check the level in your liquor bottles.

[magisterium]

I hear ya, but you’re running a bit long on the end date. The encroachments on freedom have been marching along for years and years.

[agere_contra]

Good for you. I cannot believe that people brag about avoiding Jury Duty.

[TChris]

Good for you. I cannot believe that people brag about avoiding Jury Duty.

And they're the same ones who wail and moan about bad verdicts and how the legal system is hopelessly broken.

[magisterium]

Probably got arrested for brushing her front teeth side-to-side. Hasn’t she ever heard of the “Brush Front Teeth Up-and-Down Law”? Even if she hasn’t, “ignorance of the law is no excuse”!!! She might get ten years!

[Pontiac]

Your welcome.

This kind of overkill prosecution on the part of the federal government shows the danger of entering in to international treaties.

Treaties are a real danger when you consider that it one of the main tools of the left to push their socialist agendas.

The Law of the Seas Treaty is one of the Left’s big pushes since the Reagan administration. It is a big power grab by the UN. It would give the UN the power to regulate international trade and tax the entire world by regulating international trade. The UN would become a world government in short order.

[Pontiac]

I would never try to get out of jury duty. Unfortunately, they don't seem to interested in me.

I haven’t been called for jury duty since 1985.

[The Comedian]

It's events like this which remind me how wise it was to put cameras and tripwires everywhere on my Orchid farm.

[supercat]

Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported.

This sort of thing is part of what the jury system is supposed to protect against (and would, if crooked judges didn't undermine it). If the facts of the case are as they appear, the punishment was excessive; I would suspect that a jury would likely have said so, if allowed to do so. While there are a number of things I would like to see clarified in the Constitution, high on the list would be a provision making explicit people's right to put various questions before jurors. Among them:

1. Did the defendant have an sincere and objectively reasonable belief that his actions were legitimate? If so, just punishment shall generally be restricted to restitution. The jury shall be entitled to determine whether the defendant's belief was sincere and objectively reasonable. The more obscure the rules a defendant is accused of breaking, the more likely a jury would be to excuse confusion therefrom.
2. Was the defendant's action necessary to exercise one of the rights protected under the Constitution, and was it reasonably calculated to minimize unjust harm to others or to government property and/or personnel (e.g. if the government illegitimately barricades someone's property and the person damages such barricade, such damage should not be prosecuted).
3. Did a defendant reasonably believe his action to be necessary under (2)? Note that even if a judge might rule the government's actions legitimate, a jury would still be within its authority to determine that a defendant reasonably believed that they were not.
4. Did the police conduct a search or seizure in reasonable fashion, based upon legitimate probable cause? Even if a judge sees fit to let a jury examine evidence, they should be told that evidence which--in their interpretation of the facts of the case--was not obtained legitimately should not be construed in any manner detrimental to the defendant. Note that in some cases, evidence could come to light at trial showing that even though police were issued a warrant, they did not have legitimate probable cause since they also had evidence (not shown to the warrant judge) which would prove their claims false. Thus, only a jury can really judge whether legitimate probable cause existed. (Note that allowing jurors to exercise their authority in such issues would curtail the practice of rubber-stamping warrants, since jurors might not accept evidence gained thereby).
5. Given the actual facts of the case, what level of punishment would be just, and what level would be excessive? While it might be proper for a judge to tell jurors that they must either impose a minimum sentence or acquit, it is not proper for a judge to impose a sentence harsher than anything with which a jury would agree.

Hardly a complete list of jury-related rights, but putting such issues before juries would go a long way toward restoring the Republic.

[supercat]

And they're the same ones who wail and moan about bad verdicts and how the legal system is hopelessly broken.

I'm really not sure how much power a juror has to work within the system, given that jurors are routinely denied access to information necessary to reach a just verdict. If someone is accused in federal court of illegal marijuana possession, he should be allowed to present evidence of a prescription to the jury. The prosecutor may inform the jury that the federal statutes provide no exemptions for people with prescriptions, but the defense attorney should likewise be allowed to argue that the Constitution provides otherwise. Jurors should be given a copy of the Constitution and allowed to use their own judgment as to whether the defendant's conduct in the case at hand constituted "interstate commerce".

Note that courts disallow such evidence and arguments, claiming them to be 'irrelevant'. In reality, such arguments are forbidden not because they aren't relevant, but rather because prosecutors know they are very relevant.

If a juror believes that marijuana possession may be legitimately restricted in most cases, but that the government has no right to forbid intrastate commerce by people with prescriptions, how should such a juror vote if he has no idea what defense evidence he is forbidden from hearing?

[elkfersupper]

Why in God’s name does the Fish & Wildlife Service have a ‘SWAT team’?

Good question.

Conditioning. We're being conditioned to submit.

The Agriculture Department has one too.

Before this is over, the National Endowment for the Arts will have one.

[TChris]

...given that jurors are routinely denied access to information necessary to reach a just verdict.

Well, that's quite a given.

There are reasons why some evidence is allowed and other evidence is not. It's not because the system is broken.

As for the rest, a court isn't the place to fix the law. That's what activist judges do, and we rightly condemn them for it. A jury doing it is no better.

Elected legislatures are to create and modify the law.

[Favor Center]

“1776-2009”

1776-1929 would be more accurate.

[CSM]

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers.”

Quote by: Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: “Atlas Shrugged”, Part II, Chapter 3

[supercat]

There are reasons why some evidence is allowed and other evidence is not. It's not because the system is broken

There are many reasons in which the prosecution is quite legitimately forbidden from introducing certain evidence. I can also appreciate that there need to be certain rules about how the defense may introduce evidence, to ensure that the state is given a reasonable opportunity to rebut any evidence the defense may introduce. Nonetheless, I can think of few circumstances where justice is furthered by withholding from the jury truthful information which is favorable to the defense, and am quite aware of many circumstances where such withholding leads to injustice. A jury doing it is no better.

The Founding Fathers protected the right to a jury trial for the purpose of checking government power. To be sure, jurors should not base their actions upon their personal likes and whims, but nor should they always toe the government line. If a jury decides that, no matter what a judge says, the conduct of police in a particular search was grossly unreasonable, and if the jury consequently decides to acquit someone, such a jury would not be exceeding its authority, but would instead be doing an essential part of its job.

A major problem with the present state of "law" in this country is court decisions based upon the facts of one case are often applied against people who were not parties, in other cases involving different facts. For example, if a court holds that in some particular case, cops behaved reasonably when they forced entry five seconds after they knocked on a door, such decision will be taken to mean that cops have blanket permission to knock down doors five seconds after knocking.

I would suggest that neither legislators nor courts should try to enumerate all possible factors which would render a particular search "reasonable" or "unreasonable", since no such enumeration could be even remotely complete. A far better approach would be to tell cops that they have to conduct their search in a way that twelve ordinary people can be convinced is reasonable. If cops are aware of any factors which would cause a jury to think that normal policy would be unreasonable, they must act reasonably in response to such factors, whether or not such factors were anticipated by a judge or legislature.

For example, suppose that a particular homeowner were known to be deaf, and had a sign on his door which said "Owner is deaf; please press button to flash inside lights." If the cops were to known on such person's door for five minutes (but never push the button), and then proceeded to force entry, such action would not be reasonable. There may not be any specific law or statute requiring the cops to obey the sign, but I doubt a jury would find that the cops acted reasonably and in good faith if they were to ignore it.