66 Year old Juror Persecuted by State Attorney-General Wasden - Support for Carol is needed

idahoeagleforum@msn.com wrote:

From: <idahoeagleforum@msn.com>
Subject: 66 Year old Juror Persecuted by State Attorney-General Wasden - Support for Carol is needed
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 07:58:24 -0800

This needs to be checked out for truth.  Idaho Eagle Forum

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Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 3:46 PM

Subject: 66 Year old Juror Persecuted by State Attorney-General Wasden - Support for Carol is needed

 

For Immediate Release
February 1, 2006

 

Conscientious Juror Persecuted by State of Idaho

66-year old retired school teacher charged with felony for exercising rights
as juror

Kamiah, Idaho - Feb 1: Carol Asher, a 66-year old retired nun and school teacher faces the possibility of 14 years in prison for exercising her right
to free speech in the privacy and sanctity of the jury deliberation room.
What did she say? As nearly as we have been able to learn, she may have
told the other jurors that ultimately, she answered to a Higher Authority
than the judge. Now she has been charged by Lawrence G. Wasden, who is the
Idaho Attorney General, by Stephen A. Bywater, who is Deputy Attorney
General, Chief, Criminal Division, and by Justin D. Whatcott, who is Deputy
Attorney General, all of whom work for the people of the state of Idaho,
with felony perjury for speaking her mind within the confidentiality of the
jury deliberation room.

What??

Yes, you read that right. I'll get into the details in a
minute, but first, Let's review a few basic rights which our government is
supposed to protect: Freedom of Religion; freedom of speech; freedom of
conscience; the right to trial by a jury of your peers; privacy.

No, that's not all our rights and freedoms. In fact, besides
those few rights everybody knows about from the Bill of Rights, we have all
other rights not specifically and explicitly granted to our hired government
so that it can do a better job of protecting our rights. For instance, we
granted the government the agency to represent us in negotiations with other
countries, and to declare war. That means neither you nor I think it is
feasible for us, as individuals, to negotiate with countries or declare war.
Okay, maybe. I'll let that one rest for now. But we retain all rights. In
fact, the Bill of Rights does not "grant" rights, because we already have
them. We used our rights to establish government, and the Bill of Rights is
simply a list of pre-existing rights by which we informed government that it
was not to even consider infringing.

And we do have the right - we could not give it away if we
wanted to, because it is an intrinsic part of our identity as humans - to
make decisions based on our own conscience. Carol never gave up that right
while she was in the courtroom, serving as a juror, or at any other time.
No oath administered to any juror can deprive us of that right.

Since when did free speech become a felony? If jurors are not
to deliberate, to freely discuss their impressions and ideas, if jurors are
not allowed by the state to hold open, honest consultation with each other
in a trusting and truthful fashion, then why do we have juries?

If every juror who serves on a jury must guard his or her tongue
in the privacy of the jury deliberation room, fearful of making a statement
which will be reported to the prosecutor or the defense attorney or judge by
some jury snitch, then what happened to the privacy, the sanctity, and the
confidentiality of jury deliberations?

Have we reached the time in the history of our once great nation
when jurors must be provided with a list of phrases - perhaps even words -
which they cannot utter in the jury deliberation room, under pain of prison?

Have we reached a time in our courts when jurors will be
punished for refusing to render a verdict according to the demands of the
government, when jurors will be punished if they refuse to ignore their
conscience and blindly accept the orders of the judge as the supreme law of
the land? Have we reached a time when to hold the moral and religious
reservations held by the majority of the people in this country- those
reservations which allow us all to consult our own conscience, to rely upon
our own guiding principles and religious teachings - must be ignored, set
aside?

Must we, when we serve on a jury, no matter how reprehensible a
verdict of guilty might be to our conscience, vote guilty if that is the
verdict dictated by the tight confines of government instructions? And will
we then be singled out, from among the many voting not guilty, if we have
the courage and the moral strength to share our thoughts and our reasoning
with the other jurors?

Carol respectfully listened to the evidence of the case - it was
another of those apparently slam-dunk drug cases against a minority young
male, in this case, he was Indian, not Hispanic or black - and thoughtfully
considered what she had heard, as well as what she did not hear. She was a
thinking, attentive, and conscientious juror, and tried to do her best to
pay attention to all the facts and to render a just verdict.

Carol was one of four jurors who voted "not guilty." Yet,
because she was open and honest in her remarks to the other jurors, not
realizing there might be some snitch in the room who would not respect the
confidentiality of jury room proceedings, she has been singled out to be
prosecuted for felony perjury. One must ask "why?" Well, as it turns out,
Carol also works with a civil liberties group which criticizes a lot of the
silly and abusive actions meted out by government officials against private
citizens. She has the courage to ask questions. We think that may be why
she has been singled out for this harassment, tyrannical prosecution and
general legal hazing.

Some other juror, perhaps unhappy that Carol honestly said what
was on her mind, went to rat her out to the prosecuting attorney. Well,
sure, the prosecutor wanted to win. Forget justice: these days, those
government employees go for blood, to polish their conviction rate record.
And now they are after Carol, singling her out to punish for thwarting their
prosecution, just because they think they can get away with it.

The state employees named in the first paragraph certainly know
they will lose this one on appeal, but they can meanwhile cause Carol a lot
of stress and a lot of financial hardship. By their actions, if their nasty
little ploy works, they will scare other jurors in to a state of meekness
and obedience to the state and the government employees. No more questions.
No more thinking. A nice, neat rubber-stamping of the charges brought
against anyone. This is a prosecutor's dream come true. Carol interfered
with a slam-dunk for the state lawyers, and she is being punished for being
honest about her thinking. But, don't we want jurors to think?

Why do we have juries in this country, anyway?

We all understand that juries protect society from dangerous
individuals. But how many, today, recall that juries are also empowered to
protect individuals from dangerous government prosecutions and unjust laws?

Jurors have a duty and responsibility to render a just verdict.
They must take into account the facts of the case, mitigating circumstances,
the merits of the law, and the fairness of its application in each case.
Our recognition of the authority and right of jurors to weigh the merits of
the law and to render a verdict based on conscience, dates from before the
writing of our Constitution, in cases such as those of William Penn, while
still in London, who was tried for breaking the King's law against preaching
the Quaker religion. His jury refused to convict him although the judge
ordered the jury to find him guilty. When the jury refused, the judge had
several jurors jailed until a higher court ruled that jurors could not be
punished for their verdict. Penn later came to America and founded
Pennsylvania.

No country has protected free _expression more than has the
United States, and no case in American history stands as a greater landmark
on the road to protection for freedom of the press than the trial of German
immigrant printer John Peter Zenger. On August 5, 1735, twelve New York
jurors, inspired by the eloquence of the best lawyer of the period, Andrew
Hamilton, ignored the instructions of the Governor's hand-picked judges and
returned a verdict of "Not Guilty" on the charge of publishing "seditious
libels." The Zenger trial marked the beginning of a free press, and was an
eloquent declaration of the stubborn independence of American jurors.
Those jurors insisted that they would not be bullied by the instructions of
the judges, but would remain free-thinking, independent citizens, exercising
their minds as well as their consciences to render a just verdict. That was
their responsibility as jurors, and their human right.

Should this right ever be suppressed, the people will retain the
right to resist, having an unalienable right to veto or nullify bad and
oppressive laws, and in fact, would be morally compelled to do so.

Jurors, as the representatives of the people, hold no personal
agenda during any trial and most certainly not the government's agenda. Let
us not forget that the prosecutors, judges, arresting officers - and the
forensic investigators in most cases - are all a part of and receive their
paychecks from government, with personal power bases to build and personal
careers to protect through the "productivity" of successful prosecutions
resulting in convictions. Jurors have no such stake in the outcome, and
are, in fact, the only truly objective individuals in the courtroom.

Our current form of government was organized, hired and strictly
limited by our founding private citizens to protect our rights, not
arbitrate those rights. Juries were intended as the protectors against
government's power-hungry expansion and the resultant rise of tyranny. The
primary role of our jurors remains that or serving as an independent body
to protect private citizens from dangerous, unconstitutional government laws
and actions. Many existing laws erode and deny the rights of the people.
Jurors protect against tyranny by refusing to convict harmless people.
Juries are the last peaceful defense of our civil liberties.

Our country's founders planned and expected that we, the people,
would exercise this power and authority to judge the law as well as the
facts every time we serve as jurors. What a person holds as justice in
their personal, private conscience and what decisions a person chooses in
the privacy of their own mind, are not susceptible to nor dependent upon any
external authority, direction or written law, but are the sole province of
the individual, reasoning mind.

The concept and right of sovereign juror authority is not a right
derived from any legal reasoning. It requires no citations to legitimize
it. It is a right that permeates the very concept of being human. Human
rights come before government: our government was formed by free humans to
protect human rights, not to grant them. While our government may have been
flawed, it yet rests on an excellent set of controlling concepts from which
it was formed. Human rights were what our government was designed to
protect. These rights, including the right of the individual juror to make
a decision based on rational and responsible thought and individual
conscience, transcend all legislation and legal rulings and is above any
modification or apportionment by any lawyer or politician in our form of
government.

The concept and right of sovereign juror authority requires no
citations to legitimize it: it is a concept as solid and unalienable as our
right to life. While discussions of citations and rulings are of interest,
the core authority is not derived from the words of other humans, but from
our personal, individual inherent sense of our self-ownership and our
individual responsibility toward life and all that implies.

Is our system of justice failing, or is this a failure of
government employees of the state of Idaho to understand the role of the
juror and the law? It certainly isn't a failure on the part of our
conscientious citizen jurors nor should former teacher and nun, Carol Asher
be held to account for the legitimate exercise of her rights of reason and
conscience. All thinking Idahoans should rise to her defense, in righteous
indignation, and in outrage over the arrogant, despotic actions of state
Attorney-General Wasden, and his staff, all of whom are complicit in an
official conspiracy to deny human, civil, and jurist rights, in defiant
opposition to the clear dictates of our Constitution.

Iloilo Marguerite Jones, Executive Director
Fully Informed Jury Association and American Jury Institute



Her attorney is Wesley Hoyt at hoytlaw@hotmail.com, by the way.

Carol's next court appearance is scheduled for March 7th.

Please get in touch with the people listed below and complain about this
treatment of free and honest citizen.





Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General, (208) 334-2400

Stephen A. Bywater, Deputy Attorney General, (208) 334-4545

Justin D. Whatcott, Deputy Attorney, (208) 334-4545



----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Stegmeier"
To: "VictoryUSA@jail4judges.org" ; "Todd
Quatier" ; "Ron Loeber" ; "Richard
Kirby" ; "Henry Morgan" ; "Gary
Zerman" ; "Rose Johnson" ;
; "Carol - aid $ abett" ; "Stan
Jones Mont. Coordinator" ; "Sierra Times"
; "Jack McLamb" ; "Idaho Observer"
; "FIJA"
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 7:26 PM
Subject: Idaho excitement!





I thought you guys might be interested in the following Idaho happenings:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd161.htm

Bill

P.S. Hey Don, thanks for the article on South Dakota Judicial
Accountability in your last issue of The Idaho Observer!
http://proliberty.com/observer/20060111.htm
But if you can, re-post our website as
www.SouthDakotaJudicialAccountability.com
and our email as SDJA@SouthDakotaJudicialAccountability.com Thanks!

---

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