What appears immediately below is a text of an email I have sent to three lawyers I know on the State House Judiciary Committee. All voted in committee against the right of juries to know about their historic and uncontested right to nullify laws and/or actions of government that are unjust:
My friends…I have got to say to each of you that I really don’t understand the vote you recently made in Judiciary to kill the free flow of information to juries about their historic right to nullify unjust laws and/or unjust exercise of government power against innocents. We’re all lawyers here (I copy Phyllis Woods with this email because I have ultimate respect for her, and know that she has fought for this issue for many years), and we all know that the power of juries to nullify injustice by government is absolute. We also know that the American legal system has traditionally forbidden lawyers from explaining the undoubted right of jury nullification to juries in trials. We learned about it in law school. We all probably thought then that such a rule was perverse, given the fact that the ancient Anglo-Saxon right has always been a power held by juries in America. So why should we forbid them from knowing about the fact? I remember feeling strongly that the muzzling of lawyers on this issue was foolish and unjust in law school over 35 years ago, and I still feel the same way now. It is a rule designed to empower government over the people. Please reconsider your votes against HB 146 in committee.
I rarely contact the state representatives whom I know—and I know a bunch of them thanks my work in the state GOP, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire and the Free State Project—but in this case I’m letting them all know that this is a hill to die on (to use some of the imagery from my time in Vietnam). There will be a huge floor fight, and the Democrats will be united in favor of killing the bill. Why? Because their god is government power. Ours is not, and no conservative should ever even appear to favor government over liberty, including allowing jurors to know of their sovereign power counteract the power of government (and which in fact was instituted as a check on despotic government). I very strongly implore all of you to vote in FAVOR of the jury nullification information bill during the upcoming floor fight. My thanks go out to you all.
Tim
