LSOCK NEWS December 12, 2012

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. From The Editor

Hello everyone,

I am going to give a belated thank you to our volunteers at the Kansas State Fair this year for all the effort they put in. They are Al Terwelp, Sharon DuBois, Robert Garrard, Steve Rosile, Shawn Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Mike Brincefield, Mike Wilson, Gordon Bakken, Jesse Bryant, Garrette Metzner and Dave Thomas.

The booth was a great success this year with many fair-goers showing a lot of interest in the Libertarian Party.

I also want to thank all of our LPKS candidates for public office. Our vote totals across the board were up significantly this election with a high of 31 % for Barry Albin in his campaign for Morris County Commissioner.

Nationally, Mike Fellows race for Montana Clerk of the Supreme Court set a new record for a Libertarian Party candidate in a state wide race of 42.9%. This was a two way race and Mike lost to the incumbent but that vote total shows that Libertarian candidates can (and should be) considered serious candidates.

As reported by Ballot Access News LP Presidential Candidate Governor Gary Johnson received 0.99% of the vote nationwide and his total number of votes –

over 1.200.000 (not all states have released their official totals yet) - is the highest ever for an LP Presidential candidate.

I want to thank Lacey Price and Jeremy White for organizing several sign waving events for the Gary Johnson campaign in the Wichita area. LSOCK Chair Gordon Bakken and I participated in one of these at US 54 and the Oliver Street overpass and the number of honks and waves showed that the LP has a lot of support from the people here in Kansas.

In other election news, Wichita voters again defeated fluoridation of its municipal water system despite a high level of advertising from the we-know-better-than-you crowd. I attribute this to a high level of opposition from several grass-roots citizens groups including some local professionals and national fluoride opponents that showed the public that fluoride is not supported by all the professionals and experts,.as is generally claimed by fluoride proponents.

The LPKS Executive Committee met in Council Grove Saturday, November 17 to discuss and plan the future of the LP in Kansas. One interesting fact brought out by LPKS Chair Al Terwelp was that the LPKS in the only political party in Kansas that has increased its registered voter numbers every year for the past six years and our current registration stands at  around 1300, an all time high. This despite the fact that many Libertarians changed their registrations to Republican this year in order to support Ron Paul’s Presidential Campaign effort in Kansas.

The LPKS Excom set the date for the 2013 LPKS Annual Meeting/Convention. It will be held Saturday, April 20. The location and other specifics are not yet set but that will be the day. Please plan to attend and mark your calendars now.

In what is a very exciting development several months ago the New Hampshire legislature passed a law requiring that trial judges must allow defense council to inform juries of their right to judge the law and circumstances of the case before them and render a verdict that they believe will result in a just result even if the prosecution and met all their burden of proof under the law. In a nutshell -  Jury Nullification.

This law had not even gone into effect yet when a defense attorney requested a trial judge to allow the jury to be informed of their rights as the new law would soon require. The judge agreed. This particular defendant was accused of growing several cannabis plants in his yard. The jury acquitted him outright.

Now remember that the law did not grant this right to the jury, the law just mandated that judges inform them, or allow the defense to inform them of their rights. This right under common law dates back at least to Magna Carta, 1215 AD. This  right and power is referenced in our Declaration of Independence where it says “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and it is in the jury box, not the ballot box, where this consent is granted or denied. This is one of the most precious parts of our common law heritage. It is how the people can control their government and protect their fellow citizens from bad law/bad government without resorting to violence.

The repeal of prohibition of alcohol came about when jurors, tired of the corruption and violence wrought by prohibition, began acquitting defendants charged with alcohol related crimes.

There have been other recent instances of Jury Nullification. In New Jersey shortly after the above defendant was acquitted another jury acquitted a defendant on cannabis charges. In Minnesota an Amish farmer/dairyman was charged with selling raw, unpastuerized milk by the state. The jury acquitted him.

These three cases are all just in the past three or four months.

In an August, 2011 case in Cook County, IL (Chicago) a woman was charged with eavesdropping/wire-tapping when she secretly recorded police internal affairs investigators as she was complaining about an officer that she alleged had sexually harassed her. The woman believed that the investigators were trying to dissuade her from pressing charges against the officer so she recorded the interview without the knowledge or permission of the investigators. In Illinois all parties being recorded must have knowledge and give consent. The jury in this case acquitted the woman. The jury here may have felt the law was proper but that in this set of circumstances the woman was justified in disobeying it. This is a proper use of Nullification that does not necessarily mean that the jury finds the law invalid, just that the circumstances are such that the law should not apply.

However, after this acquittal, the ACLU challenged the state law in federal court and the federal district court ruled it unconstitutional. On appeal the federal circuit court of appeals upheld the lower court ruling and the Cook County Prosecutor appealed to the US Supreme Court who refused to hear the case, letting the trial court and appeals court rulings stand. I learned of this case in the past week or two in the email newsletter Liberty Crier, published by a group of Ron Paul supporters.

The Fully Informed Jury Association (www.fija.org) has been educating the public nationwide about this for over twenty years and it is finally beginning to pay off as this power of jury nullification is being restored to the public’s mind. This will surely come into play if/when the federal government attempts to enforce their cannabis drug regulations in Colorado and Washington after those two states’ cannabis legalization efforts were successful in last November’s elections.

In Wichita LSOCK has been providing FIJA and other information about jury rights on a regular basis at the Sedgwick County Courthouse and other locations

since 1996. Please go to www.fija.org for more information and do some research on the 1670 trial of William Penn in London, England. Yes, that William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.

For Liberty,

Steven A. Rosile

Editor, LSOCK NEWS