If you were on a Jury, would you convict someone charged with carrying W/O license?

Would you convict a man carrying illegally

  • yes

    Votes: 39 32.0%

  • no

    Votes: 83 68.0%
  • Total voters
    122
That is one that is only a crime because somebody arbitrarily decided to make it a crime.
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Arbitrary as in passed by a majority of a duly elected legislature :rolleyes:

Why do't you guys just come out and say it. You are perfectly fine with our government so long as everything goes your way, but if something comes along that you don't agree with,whether its been properly passed or not, process be dammed.

THATS WHAT THE ANTIS DO AND YOU ALL ARE NO DIFFERENT.
 
It use to be the case, and forgive me because I've forgotten the citations and will paraphrase here, that judges were required to instruct jurors that it was their duty to also consider and pass judgment on the law, by acquitting (or voting to, anyway) when their conscience told them the law was unjust, illegal, etc. Late in the 19th, or early in the 20th, century, the SCOTUS stated in a decision that, basically, because everyone knew this was the case and it had been a well established consensus doctrine for centuries, it was a waste of the judge's time to provide this instruction; they could do so if they wanted, but could not be required to. And now, of course, the vast majority of the legal profession deny this was ever so, and the public is almost completely unaware of any aspect of jury service beyond the fact that it might take time away from television or something.
 
Stage 2.

Tyranny of the majority is no fiction.

Process be damned would be something like insurrection in the streets. That's a step or maybe even two from an independent jury deliberating on the facts and the law.

Participating in the jury process and allowing your conscience a role with your intellect is every bit as important, though a good deal less efficient, than electing a representative government.

An individual act of jury nullification affects a single case. Important to the individual, but trivial in the larger picture. It is only when the collective conscience rebels against the manifest injustice of bad law that real change is effected whether by eventual repeal or disuse of that law.

Does anyone really believe that a law so bad that jury after jury refuses to return a conviction based upon it is good law?
 
Stage 2

The majority need no protection..the Constitution was written to protect the minority from the majority..and too often from the laws of the majority
 
the Constitution was written to protect the minority from the majority..and too often from the laws of the majority
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And the constitution also clearly sets for the process by which to change bad laws, and enact valid ones.

Your views fly in the face of our system. Because you don't like a certian result you're going to take your ball and go home.

Here's a better question for you Danzig. What do you do about state trials where the fed system isn't applicable. Are you going to invent some magical right there as well despite the fact that rules and statutes have been enacted? Those darned powers reserved to the states remember?
 
And the constitution also clearly sets for the process by which to change bad laws, and enact valid ones.
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It can be pretty inefficient and ineffective at times, though. I don't disagree with the process to change laws but how long did it take before laws against slavery and segregation were changed? It took action on the part of those "activist judges" to force the people, mainly the south, to recognize equal rights for everyone. Just because bad laws can be changed a certain way doesn't mean we have to let them take generations to happen.
 
I believe that this is one of the basic checks and balances built into the system, which is why your right to jury trial is guaranteed by the constitution.

If it was not the intention of the framers to allow the people to rule against unjust laws, they could as easily specified that trials would be decided by judges. Funny how this debate has degenerated into strawman name calling.
 
Come on Stage 2!!! Our rights transcend government..not just at the federal level but all all levels. How could it be any other way?

You don't believe, for example, that a law that violates our rights on a federal level is somehow worse in some way that a similar law on a state or local level, do you?
 
Our rights transcend government..not just at the federal level but all all levels. How could it be any other way?
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How can a right transcend government when it woldn't exist without government?
 
I voted yes because it is a law and as such the honest citizen is required to conform to a law regardless of the stupidity of it. Unless he was dishonest then he deserves a sentence.
 
Danzig

"Come on Stage 2!!! Our rights transcend government..not just at the federal level but all all levels."
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Interesting. Do the 1st Amendment rights of a child pornographer also "transcend government" ??
 
Sasquatch, you misunderstand the nature of rights I think. We have the right to do anything that we want with our lives. Anything at all. Provided that the exercise of those rights to not infringe upon the rights, or harm, another person or their property (which is an extension of their very lives). That is why crimes such as murder, molestation, rape, theft, kidnapping, etc are wrong. They do violate the rights and lives of other people. My rights end at your body, property line, and family. Yours end at my body, my family, and my property.

That is what makes the child pornographer a criminal..not the government saying that he is..but the fact that he's brought harm to another person.

Those laws that protect our rights and freedoms should be upheld completely. But those laws that do not protect our rights..deserve to be nullified..if not completely repealed.
 
OK.........let's change that child pornographer to, say, a prostitute.

Do crack dealers have the "right" to sell their dope to consenting adults???
 
OK.........let's change that child pornographer to, say, a prostitute.
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A prostitute also affects the lives of other people through her actions (and so does the man that she....does business with). It creates and spreads disease.
 
if it's her choice..it's definately HER body. Nobody has the right to control what she does with her body. Not you, not me. Just because someone else may disagree with her choices..that does not give them the right to impose there will upon her rights.

Next question?
 
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