Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 20, 2010

Missoula County District Court Judge Dusty Deschamps called it a ?mutiny? ? a revolt triggered by ?hardliners? and ?militants? who are subverting the criminal justice system.

This outpouring of judicial outrage followed the refusal of roughly one-third of a pool of potential jurors to convict a man of a felony based on possession of one-sixteenth of an ounce of marijuana.

Only a tyrant in black robes would use the term ?mutiny? to describe an instance in which jurors reclaimed their plenary authority to judge both the facts and the validity of a law

The defendant was already serving a sentence for theft, which ? unlike anything having to do with marijuana consumption ? is an actual crime against persons and property. Deschamps and the prosecutor were piling on by seeking to manufacture a drug conviction.

Owing to the perverse incentives created through federal intervention, this kind of prosecutorial behavior is quite typical. The peaceful, principled revolt by potential jurors, however, is a new, welcome, and badly overdue development.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.