I have seen the future.

The jury has a *duty* to refuse to convict, in fact.

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unnamed525.livejournal.com

Juries aren't informed of the right of jury nullification anymore, instead, being told that they're duty is to find the accused guilty if they've broken the law, regardless of how stupid that law is.

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matthewwdaly.livejournal.com

I don't know about Michigan, but when I served on a New York jury last year, jury nullification was the first thing in the orientation video. Indeed, they specifically said that the reason we have trial by jury is because the community has the right to reject laws they feel to be unjust. At the same time, we are told that our duty is to apply the evidence to the law as written blah blah blah, but it's still within our power to reject that.

As I understand it, the jury deliberated for five and a half hours. That's a really long time and it says to me that they are decent people did the best they could with a tough problem. Hell, I sat on a jury that convicted a guy for criminal possession of a weapon which was discovered because he accidentally shot HIMSELF with it, and that took us less than two hours including lunch. I don't like the decision they reached but, like Dr. Watts, I don't blame them for it.

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The fact that they came up with a transparently idiotic result means that not only can I blame them for it, I *do* blame them for it.

And in your case, the fact that there was no reason for an investigation should have imediately resulted in acquittal on the grounds that all investigation was nonsense: No crime could *possibly* have been committed.

That you convicted is a travesty.

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matthewwdaly.livejournal.com

You show up in an emergency room with a gunshot wound, and it is always investigated. The guy's cover story about being caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting fell through and the (unlicensed, loaded) gun (with no safety device) was found in his girlfriend's possession, then they both made independent voluntary statements describing the situation that I described.

Hey, at the beginning of the trial I was in your camp. I thought that CPW with no additional charges associated with a "real" crime was the most bullshit law I'd ever heard of until I learned today that failure to comply with police orders when dazed from an unwarranted beating is a felony, and that opinion hasn't changed. But I heard the testimony and examined the evidence in this specific case and came to the conclusion that he was guilty in spite of my initial skepticism. The travesty would have been letting this guy back onto the streets until he musters enough dumbwittery to accidentally shoot someone else.

Of course you *can* blame a jury for returning the verdict you don't like, just as I *can* begrudgingly respect it. Have fun with it.

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That's because there is no right of jury nullification, and that IS the duty of a finder of fact. Determine facts, apply to law, return result of that application. It's not the role of the trial court to make law - that's what legislators and appellate courts are for.

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Uh, there *is* a right of jury nullification, and it's been part of the Common Law since *long* before Washington and Jefferson made their wet, sloppy, sticky mistake all over North America.

It's historically been used very badly in the USA, but it exists.

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There was a right of jury nullification in Common Law England, centuries ago, when trials were . Courts have been pretty unanimous that jury nullification has no place in any legal system subject to the concept of a rule of law, and the proponents of it are basing their arguments on grotesque misreadings of state constitutions and a basic failure to comprehend a single 1794 treaty case.

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Uh, do you not understand that *your entire legal system* is based on English common law?

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Do you understand that the English Common Law is not sacrosanct, and parts of it that are no longer relevant, or contradictory to things like the Constitution, get removed?

In the English Common Law, there were entirely separate court systems for matters of law and matters of equity. That was a stupid idea, and in most jurisdictions has been stripped out entirely. Jury nullification had a place in the ancient English monarchic system, but as it's counter to the very idea of a rule of law governed by a Constitution, it's not part of ours.

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Jury nullification is neither contradictory to your constitution nor has it been removed from your legal system.

The fact that you don't like it does not change this.

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The courts have pretty much unanimously disagreed with you about that. As much as you seem to want laws enforced completely haphazardly and prejudicially, that's not how it's supposed to work.

Jury nullification is southern juries disregarding anti-lynching laws. Jury nullification is juries tossing out rape cases because the guy has a promising football career. Jury nullification is convicting people on something they didn't do, because they probably did do something else and got away with it. Jury nullification might even be a bunch of authoritarian psychos convicting a writer for being Canadian and not worshipful of the cops, whether or not he actually committed the crime. As much as you would like the outcome you think jury nullification might produce in this particular case, letting juries decide that the law isn't the law today is always a bad thing.

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The authoritarian psychos in this case are the border guards and the prosecutor. The jury simply failed in their duty to acquit someone who was transparently being framed and against whom the prosecution admitted they had no reasonable argument that any crime had been committed by the guy on trial.

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And at the very minimum, it's directly contradictory to the separation of powers. It is not the role of the jury, as a trial-level judicial entity, to make law.

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was supposed to read "when trials were magisterial and entirely for show".

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... oh, come on now. You're not an idiot. Are you seriously trying to suggest that jury nullification is anything other than an unconscionable perversion of a juror's duty, irreconcilable with the very concept of a rule of law?

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If the law were perfect, it would be.

The law is not, and juries have the duty of refusing to convict for breaking of unjust laws, just as prosecutors have the duty to refuse to prosecute unjust laws, police have the duty to refuse to enforce them, and citizens have the duty to break them.

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anton-p-nym.livejournal.com

Well, he obviously obstructed the officer... with his face.

-- Steve's annoyed by this verdict, but wants to know more about how it was reached before getting really pissed off. (Is it busted law, or government chicanery?)

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Busted law. The "obstructing" law counts "failing to respond faster than the guard who is punching you can reach his Mace" as being the same as attacking the guard. And the jury were idiots for accepting that.

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argonel.livejournal.com

Even before we get to the charges, has anyone given a satisfactory answer why US CBP officers were preventing him from LEAVING the US? I would expect that he would have to interact with Canadian customs agents, but not US ones.

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Supposed suspicion of smuggling stuff out? At a guess.

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waldhornist.livejournal.com

But then again, the article said it was a random stop. :S

Still doesn't make any of this right.

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Absolutely.

Random searh for smuggling and otherwise leaving with stuff you're not supposed to was what I was saying — the question from

argonel seemed to be asking for what reason was he being searched on exiting the US, as opposed to the Canadian authorities searching him on their side.

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faeriemuriel.livejournal.com

I don't think that any kind of "random" search will ever be random until a computer is telling you to do it. (And then it still won't be truly random for a while yet, tee-hee.)

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opaqueplanet.livejournal.com

When I flew to Mexico in '02, they had truly random (well, as close as current algorithms will go) searches at the airport in Mazatlan. You pushed a button, and a light either turned red or green (like a one in ten chance of turning red). If it turned red, your bags were searched. If not, you went through.

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He was taking a rental car with Washington plates across the Michigan border. That throws flags.

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lafinjack.livejournal.com

...the prosecution worked hard to keep it from being shown to the jury.

What was their ~~excuse~~ reasoning?

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It contradicted their story and showed that Watts wasn't guilty.

What, you want more?

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lafinjack.livejournal.com

Well I knew that, I'm just wondering how they got it to stick.

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By arguing that:

Officer: "OBEY!" [punch in the face twice]
Victim, having been punched in the face twice without warning: "Whuh?"
Officer: "I MACE YOU NOW!"

is equivalent to the Victim attacking the Officer with a chainsaw.

Duh.

You are so stupid to not understand this!

(There's a reason I emphatically objected to travelling via the USSA on my last trip.)

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lafinjack.livejournal.com

...is equivalent to the Victim attacking the Officer with a chainsaw.

I understand that.

What I'm asking is if you know if they used some specific legal argument to invalidate the video as legal evidence, so that their job of fitting the remaining facts to their obey-punch-whuh-mace narrative would work on the jury.

Was it more busted law that the video violated? Was the judge in on it, or at least leaning towards the good ol' boy and OK with dicking over a furrner? You know a lot more about the case than I do, and I'd rather avoid digging through a bunch of Drudge/Fox hoorah bullshit to find out.

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ashbet

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186

Here's the info directly from Dr. Watts, FWIW.

This is a fucking travesty :(

-- A <3

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In the absence of seeing the actual video, it's basically impossible to tell what actually happened on that bridge. Both sides have repeatedly changed their versions of events.

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AFAIK, the video was in fact shown, supporting his side of events.

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No, Watts has maintained the same version all the way through, and the border guards eventually agreed that his version was the truth and that they had been lying.

Watts was stopped at random, told to get out of his car (and he did), asked why he was stopped, was punched twice in the face and told to lie down, and responded by grabbing his face and saying "what?" because he was surprised and dazed, and was then maced.

The conviction was *refusal to obey*, the specific incident being his "refusal" in the two seconds between being struck by the officer and being maced by the officer, when he had no opportunity or ability to obey.

The original charge included allegations that he'd attacked the officer first, that he had choked the officer, and that he had threatened the officer. None of these things were true. The boarder guards were lying, and were proven outright to have been lying, and admitted to having been lying when confronted with their lies.

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ashbet

What

theweaselking said. The video was shown in court, and it supported Dr. Watts' version of events -- however, refusal to immediately comply with the order to lie down (even while dazed after being punched in the face) is technically against the law. That's what the jury convicted on.

It's a bad law, and the jury SHOULD have nullified -- however, the right of jury nullification isn't well-known, and judges' instructions vary by state and even from trial to trial and judge to judge.

Someone who identified themselves as a juror [obv. unverifiable] commented in Dr. Watts' journal, basically saying that they felt like they had no choice but to convict based on the way the law was written, despite the fact that the guard was clearly in the wrong.

(If they felt that they had no choice, they probably weren't instructed on nullification, FWIW.)

-- A <3

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Right after it happened, Watts was saying on his blog that he got out of the car without being asked, refused to get back in the car when instructed to, and refused to get on the ground when told. His story has changed, dramatically.

If the video showing what actually happened is publicly available, I'd love to know where to find it.

From:

torrain.livejournal.com

Right after it happened, he said:

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.).

I'm not seeing how his story changed; yes, there was elaboration and a calmer tone, but I'm not seeing how it changed. Let me know if you find that video?

Edited Date: 2010-03-20 07:04 pm (UTC)

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Originally, he said that he got out of the car on his own, without prompting, to question the search. Now, he's saying he got out after being ordered to, after having been punched through the driver's side window a few times. Originally, he said he was ordered back into the vehicle, and refused. Now, that part of the story never happened.

Watts is contradicting himself, materially changing his story to make himself more of a victim as time goes on. No version of events he's presenting can be taken as trustworthy. The same is true of the cops. The only reliable evidence of what actually happened is the video, which hasn't been publicly released. The only people who actually HAVE seen it, though, decided unanimously that he was out of line.

Someone claiming to be a member of the jury that convicted Watts posted on the Times-Herald's site about this story. They said "As a member of the jury that convicted Mr. Watts today, I have a few comments to make. The jury's task was not to decide who we liked better. The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge."

It doesn't matter that he's some sort of beloved writer. All that matters is whether the evidence proves that he committed the crime he was charged with, and according to the only people who've actually seen that evidence say it did. It's easy to throw a bunch of baseless characterizations of the jurors here as being a bunch of pro-cop psychos, and easy to assume that just because this guy is a writer he must automatically be in the right, but the actual facts don't always back that up.

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