Federal prosecutors have their legal knickers in a knot over a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor who spends part of his day standing outside a United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a "Jury Info" sign and handing out brochures to passers-by. What could he be fomenting that federal prosecutors would indict him for jury tampering?
Benjamin Weiser writing in the NYTimes, "Brief Details Jury Nullification Against Julian Hecklin," says there are two sides to the story.
What's "jury nullification"? Excerpt:
"...jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it."
On the one hand federal prosecutors believe that Mr. Hecklin has violating the law against jury tampering by handing out brochures on the subject to folks who pass by the courthouse, some of whom might be jurors or prospective jurors. Here's their argument. Excerpt.
"But now prosecutors are offering their first detailed explanation for why they charged Mr. Heicklen, arguing in a brief that his “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”
“His speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” prosecutors wrote.
“No legal system could long survive,” they added, “if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable.”"
The defense claims that Mr. Hecklin is exercising his First Amendment rights of free speech. Excerpt.
"Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said: “The government is dangerously wrong in claiming it can criminalize sidewalk advocacy supporting jury nullification. Other than the extremely limited situations in which someone seeks to influence a known juror in a case, jury nullification advocacy is squarely protected by the First Amendment.”"
Here's where it gets sticky. Apparently there were those who saw enough of a threat in Mr. Hecklin and his pamphleting that he was targeted by an undercover. Excerpt.
"Lawyers assisting him (officially, he is acting as his own lawyer) wrote in a motion to dismiss that prosecutors were seeking “to imprison a man for disseminating a lawful message about a subject in which he has an honest and deeply held belief.”
The lawyers, Sabrina Shroff and Steven M. Statsinger, said the prosecution of Mr. Heicklen would only draw attention to the nullification issue and would “surely convert more to the cause than poor Mr. Heicklen ever could on his own.”
But a prosecutor, Rebecca Mermelstein, wrote in the government brief that Mr. Heicklen’s courthouse appearances, his “Jury Info” sign, his writings, and statements he made to an undercover agent posing as a passer-by showed his “intent to target prospective jurors in particular.”
“I’m not telling you to find anybody not guilty,” she quoted Mr. Heicklen telling the agent in a secretly recorded conversation.
“But,” he added, “if there is a law you think is wrong then you should do that.”"
What do you think? Old crank with too much time on his hands? Defender of our freedoms? What about all the so-called "truths" that are being spewed by the media as election campaigns are ratcheting up to be some of the most base, mean-spirited and misleading on record? How do we know what is truth and what is fiction? And all this in the shadow of barricades being erected in Tahir Square - a world away in so many ways.
My position is to let people decide for themselves. They do anyway.
