Posted on 07/27/2018 2:59:37 PM PDT by Drew68
Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine.
The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasnt hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesnt belong in prison.
The jurys decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been jury nullification, another case of citizens saying prosecutions for pot are not worth law enforcements time and effort or the impact on otherwise law-abiding peoples lives.
It was the second such win in the Laurens County circuit for Atlanta attorney Catherine Bernard, a conservative Republican whos also a staunch civil libertarian. Late last year, another client of hers fessed up to a jury that he had sold a couple of nickel bags to an insistent undercover drug cop. That client was cut loose after just 18 minutes of deliberation.
And this is no liberal soft-on-crime region. Donald Trump won the county 2-1.
Bernard also helped get North Georgia authorities to drop charges against the parents of a 15-year-old whose parents allowed him to smoke pot to help combat severe seizures.
Ultimately, what may have kept McCoy out of an orange jumpsuit was that his lawyer urged the jury to empower themselves. She told them they are not potted plants or an unthinking arm of government. They, in fact, are the government. She read to the jury a section from the Georgia Constitution that says, The jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
I believe I resemble that remark...
“This is how the drug war ends. Juries, empowered to think for themselves, let obviously guilty defendants walk free.”
It is. It’s a fricking waste of time and money.
Not necessarily.
12 people can decide what they want or don’t want in their community. One big thing they want is the quiet enjoyment of their lives.
The legal industry has turned drug and alcohol convictions into an industry. Traffic violations too. Every day - every one I go by the same speed trap, and that’s their job - create revenue. Nobody is safer.
This attorney’s got it right, and frankly people should be thinking for themselves, because the laws being made are ridiculous.
Just yesterday, Santa Barbara, CA made it a jailable offense to offer a plastic straw to a restaurant patron.
Sound reasonable to you? I’d insist on a jury trial in that case, and I’d bet I never make it there.
Amen. A free person shouldnt fear some social-engineering dumbass.
“Juries, empowered to think for themselves,”
Hopefully it spreads to other obviously unjust prosecutions.
May I point out that it has been legal to make your own alcohol for many years?
Yeah, just vote the sociopaths who think they should runnthings.
“If you don’t like the law change it.”
Juries decide guilt ot innocence. If you don’t like it, change the law.
The top law is the Constitution, which allows this.
Vote OUT
Reads like winning to me!
Thanks for the ping.
I like the way this jury thinks!
Oh, please!
” but it is only natural to expect the same type of laws regulating booze will be applied equally to weed.”
Sure, it should. Also, let society shun it. Fact is, I rarely ever get drunk, rarely, but I do drink, smoke cigars, and love a Scotch with them. But I think society can control its own.
I know a guy that got popped for a DWI. He had about a gram of weed in his pocket when he got to jail. Cop asked what it was, he said weed, and the cop dropped it in the trash. The money is in DWIs.
Id bet most of the members of the jury had smoked pot at some time. If the guy was growing for himself, not selling it, and not parading around bragging about...I would let him off too.
We have more important things to pay attention to.
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