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Strategies & Market Trends : Banned.......Replies to the A@P thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (983)	12/20/2004 1:33:58 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5425

rrufff, John is not talking about jury nullification, nor was I. Either you are making a straw horse in order to knock it down or are missing the point completely. The point is that while laws on the surface seem like they are black or white, they are all based on context and thus open to interpretation. In fact, you totally defeat your own argument when you write "c) if they find that the defendant did, in fact, break that law which applies to him..." That's the very definition of interpretation. At some point there was probably a simple law that said you couldn't kill someone. Then, over time, we got different degrees of murder, as well as the crime of manslaughter. At some point someone must have argued that he killed someone in self-defense and the jury must have said, hey, that's a good excuse, and hence let him off. At some point other juries began considering whether abortion and mercy killings should be considered a form of murder. What about praying instead of providing your child with medicine known to cure a disease? I think you get the picture. As pertains to the Elgindy trial, according to Prof. Peter J. Henning, no cases brought under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 "involved a criminal prosecution, and it will be interesting to see if the U.S. Attorney can establish a market manipulation case based on use of truthful information." (see: Message 20773757 ) So it appears this jury will be breaking new ground here. That's what makes this case so interesting. - Jeff

To: rrufff who wrote (983)	12/20/2004 8:07:32 AM
From: John Sladek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5425

Dog that won't hunt, I was providing the internet links to you so that you could get a bit of education on the cheap, rather than doing it the hard way (you know reading books and thinking and stuff like that). I picked one particular example because it showed from the earliest stages of American history, that the ancient right of English juries also apply in the USA. I realize that America's founding fathers are having a rather rought time right now, and their ideas of freedom and democracy are seen as quaint and antiquated by the current crowd in power and the psychophants that support them. But hey, if ignorant people don't even know that certain rights exist, how can they fight for them? My knowledge on this subject is not internet-based, for instance, the transcript of Penn's trial, I first read about 20 years ago. your post is an example of the internet leading to experts who have a little knowledge and you know what they say about the danger of "a little knowledge." You can talk about jury nullification and the need for a nullification law, and other kinds of irrelevancies to your hearts content. The bottom line is that the jury has always had the power to decide the law, and it continues to exercise that power to this day. First, the jury deliberates is in secret and there is no judge there to ensure that the jury follows his instructions on law. Furthermore, if the judge found out that the jury had ignored his instructions on law, he has no power to fine, imprison or torture the jurors, or to overrule their verdict. Therefore the jury has the power and the ability to rule on the law, even if the judge's instructions do not inform them of this right. The suggestion that "Jury Nullification" leads to chaos is a foolish - juries have always had the right to ignore the law, and have repeatedly exercised this right. It seems to me that you would have been one of the jurors who caved in to the judge's pressure and returned a "guilty" verdict against Penn.