Did people consider picketing to influence the jury as they enter the building.
Or no
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well i know i’d like to be there but don’t own a car. what are the relevant dates?
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Supposedly Nov 1st to start, but lots can change between now and then.
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The Fully Informed Jury Association at FIJA.org has pamphlets available to hand out that explain jury nullification:
https://fija.org/shop/shop.html
Any day is a good day to go outside a courthouse and hand some out. If people go randomly from time to time, it’s harder for government officials to allege there’s an effort to influence the jury in a specific trial (as if simply informing potential jurors of their longstanding historical civil rights to judge the law as well as the facts of a case is “jury tampering”!)
I can’t be there in person, but if anybody plans to order or print out some FIJA or similar jury nullification pamphlets to hand out, I’d make a donation to help with costs – give me a call any time at (415) 573-7997 to coordinate.
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I do remember hearing that (some? all?) judges in New Hampshire are actually required to let jurors know about their right to nullify (if this isn’t on the lists of reasons to move to The Shire, maybe it should be?). The rule might be just to allow attorneys to inform them of this, I don’t recall hearing details. But even if informing jurors about nullification is required, and applies to all courts operating in the state, official info provided to jurors on the topic might not be as informative or free from State bias as desired.
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Jury Nullification can be brought up by defense in NH state courts. Federal not-so-much.
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The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA.org) has a very informative article about jury nullification in New Hampshire by Kirsten C. Tynan here:
Unfortunately, it does not offer any good news. According to the author, the NH Supreme Court gutted the state’s groundbreaking nullification statute HB 146 shortly after it was passed in 2012, so that the law now has no practical effect. She believes the Shire is currently no better than any other state in terms of juror rights and is aware of only one case in NH where the law (technically before it even took effect) enabled a successful defense, in a cannabis case. (She also mentions Nobody’s cannabis case, where it was used unsuccessfully).
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Well…I guess people thought of jury null… But I was just thinking of any sign that would achieve the desired ends.
That could be put in front of the jury as they enter or exit.
I don’t know what those signs might be.
I also don’t know if the feds would do more of a crack down on that, than the towns have, in the past.
I’m not sure about this courthouse, but I suspect there is a back entrance anyway that a jury would enter from given it’s a relatively recently built courthouse, but that said it is correct that we have been doing jury nullification outreach in New Hampshire for a decade plus and no jury nullification outreach is specific to a given case. Heck- generally you’re not even going to know who the jury members are or if there are jury members passing you by outside of a courthouse let alone for what particular case they may be a juror on short of someone specifically seeking that information out. Ultimately the moral of the story is don’t seek out jurors and especially not jurors of a specific case.
That said~ I’m pretty confident that they are more than likely to give us problems at the federal courthouse than at the state courthouse. They or someone (IDK if it’s federal or state authorities) certainly creates problems at other federal courthouses in other states. Which may be a good enough reason to protest and/or justify conducting jury nullification outreach somewhere in the vicinity of the courthouse, but explicitly external to the property. Filming it is also important to ensure these lying bastards can’t be effective in claiming violations of law which haven’t actually happened.
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Despite that, Jury Nullification is not prohibited from the state courts and you are free to bring it up if you like, at least from what I’ve seen. That said, the legislature should take another crack at this issue.
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I think of the phrase, “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission”
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