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SEATTLE - A bizarre drama that began last summer with a bucket of human excrement thrown at a local woman has ended with a "not guilty" verdict in the trial of the man accused of throwing it. The verdict has left the woman, Cheri Monson, in shock and in tears - and in utter disbelief over the jury's decision. The incident took place last August when Monson was walking up the stairwell to her apartment at a South Seattle public housing complex near Beacon Hill. That's when 70-year-old Ronald V. Ellis, who lived in a neighboring unit, came out and...

* 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 was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a...

Jurors today shot down the DA’s hunt for a Florida man, and acquitted him on a felony rap for coming into New York packing heat..........

With O.J. Simpson giving his agreement from prison, a judge approved a plan Monday to donate the suit the former NFL star was wearing when he was acquitted of murder to the Smithsonian Institution. The deal ends a 13-year legal battle between Simpson's former sports agent Mike Gilbert and Fred Goldman, the father of the man Simpson was accused of killing in 1994. Both men claimed the right to the suit, shirt and tie Simpson was wearing Oct. 3, 1995, when he was acquitted of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman after a trial that riveted...

The government is going to be in a position where it either has to defend the process that brought the Sheikh to court or seek ways to prevent these issues from arising. However, because Mr. Obama promised that Mr. Mohammed would enjoy the most exacting demands of justice, they probably will be given a full airing. We await a further explanation from the president to clarify how this makes the country safer, particularly if Mr. Mohammed leaves New York a free man.

Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. ---------------------------cut--------------------------- Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has. We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct. --------------------------------------cut------------------ This is an inevitable...

Jury Nullification and the 2nd Amendment A Program For Rights Restoration Copyright 2007, Guy Smith Introduction “ . . . it is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.” John Adams, 1771 You have the ability to overturn any anti-gun law you want. All it takes is a bit of knowledge and a seat on a jury. In our legal system, juries have a power known as “nullification”. This means that any single juror may refuse...

In the comments to yesterday's jury nullification piece (yes, I read your comments) Smitty was especially on-point when he said, "The real problem might be toleration, or more accurately, the lack of it. We wish our preferred freedoms to be respected, while applauding governmental crackdowns upon those freedoms we dislike or are indifferent to." Frankly that's been an ongoing hurdle in the effort to preserve and extend liberty. Until pot-smokers and gun owners and low-taxers and sexual minorities recognize that liberty is indivisible and that we're all in this together, we're going to be picked off piecemeal by government officials...

A green British jury has perverted an ancient legal right, using it to excuse eco-terrorism. As The Independent reports: The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage. Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate...

 . . . and that's a GOOD thing. From FIJA.org:Jury Rights Day Press Release:Jury Rights Day September 5, 2008 This Friday, September 5, 2008, marks the 338th anniversary of the day when jurors refused to convict William Penn of violating England's Conventicle Acts, despite clear evidence that he acted illegally by preaching a Quaker sermon. In refusing to convict Penn, the jurors refused to enforce what they knew to be an unjust law. This is known as jury nullification. By refusing to enforce what they knew was an unjust law, the Penn jurors not only served justice, but provided a...

To grasp why the Bill of Rights leads off by barring Congress from "establishing" any religion, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," you must understand that in 18th century England there was no "separation of church and state." The English monarch to this day includes in her title "Fidele Defensor" -- Defender of the Faith. Which helps explain why even our right to a jury trial stems directly from this era. In 1670, it was declared illegal to hold a religious gathering or preach a sermon in England which was not a "Church of England" sermon. Dissident churches, including the...

Panelists claim woman wouldn't consider evidence, accused them of racism - The sole black juror on a panel deadlocked along racial lines lied to win a seat on the jury and then set out to exact revenge on law enforcement by serving as the spoiler in the trial of an alleged drug chief serving as his own lawyer, some of her fellow jurors said Monday.Jurors in the trial of Johnnie "Bro" Martin walked out of U.S. District Court with nothing to show for nine days of work but a mistrial. "She made a mockery of the system," one juror said...

Terror Financing: After the Holy Land Foundation case ended in a mistrial, Muslim groups cheered and scolded the U.S. for a witch hunt. But defendants got some help from the inside.t turns out that a Hamas-sympathizing juror sabotaged the biggest terror-funding case in U.S. history by bullying jurors who favored convictions. According to interviews conducted since the October mistrial, juror William Neal intimidated colleagues into voting for acquittals of Holy Land leaders accused of funneling millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families. Neal, a Dallas graphic artist who voted not guilty across the board, launched into obscenity-laced tirades against...

Its time for Americans to take a stand against the attacks on our individual, natural rights. Jury nullification is the way to do it.

The government will retry a prominent marijuana advocate on cultivation charges even though he faces no punishment if convicted, beyond the one day in jail he's already served, a federal prosecutor said today. Prosecutors decided on a second trial for Ed Rosenthal after a "thorough and careful review,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan told U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer... Defense lawyer Shari Greenberger said she would ask Breyer to order the government to reimburse Rosenthal for the time his lawyers spent getting the new charges dismissed.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox said Tuesday it will air a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson at month's end in which he describes the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and her friend that he says he didn't commit. The interview will be conducted by editor and book publisher Judith Regan. On November 30, her Regan Books is publishing a book Simpson wrote with the working title "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened." Fox said Simpson's book "hypothetically describes" how he would have committed the murders. The special will air at 9 p.m. November 27 and 29 on...

<p>BRIDGEPORT, Conn. --A Fairfield lawyer has been charged with stabbing his neighbor to death after learning the man had molested his 2-year-old daughter, police said.</p> <p>Fairfield authorities said attorney Jonathon Edington leaped through 58-year-old Barry James' bedroom window Monday and stabbed him nearly a dozen times in the chest. Edington, 29, was arraigned on murder and burglary charges Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court. He was held on $1 million bond and is scheduled to return to court on Sept. 12.</p>

Just flashed on Fox, jury has a verdict, to be read at 4:30PM EST!

Playing the race card may inhibit true justice in Durham alleged rape case by DANIEL T. ZANOZA Over a decade ago, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of a double murder. Though most of the evidence seemed to indicate Simpson had brutally killed his wife and her friend, a jury--compromised mostly of African-Americans--set him free and created a new debate concerning the future of America's justice system. Simpson's skillful lawyers played the race card in his trial and a new term became known to the American public: Something called "jury nullification" reared its ugly head in the process in what...

Should be entertaining...starting any minute.