Juries Get the Final Vote on Bad Laws

May 21, 1991

Dear Editor,

Recently thete has been some talk in the media about the seeming incompetence of juries. A reactionary approach to remedy this situatuation would be to abolish the jury and let the judge decide the final verdict. This would be a tragic loss of a very fundamental check on power guaranteed by the Constitution.

The jury of peers -- the voting citizens of the nation -- was designed by the Founding Fathers as a subtle yet powerful component of the system of checks and balances. If a corrupt bill happens to pass the House of Repiesentatives and is also passed by the Senate; signed into law by the President and upheld by the Judicial branch (a phenomenon we don't seem to have any shortage of today); then a joury can still vote "No" by proclaiming a person charged of breaking such a law to be "innocent." All jurors need to be aware of this right. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I consider trial by jury as the as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its Constitution."

If this right -- the right to a trial by july -- were to be takcn away, then the only check left on tyranny would be the right to keep and bear arms; for, as Jeferson also stated, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

If we have come to a day that people are so ignorant of principles of freedom that they will insinuate that juries should be done away, and the general populace does not respond with fury over this suggestion, then I fear greatly for the fate of this once great nation.

by Sterling D. Allan; Provo, Utah