Johnathan Turley, who I have long admired and have actually been in agreement with so many times on the law, and even though he is a self-described liberal, unwittingly showed a glaring blind spot in his understanding of the American Peoples guaranteed right to a trial by jury.
I will not go into a long history lesson as to why our Founders were so adamant in guaranteeing the right to a trial by jury in our constitutions, state and federal, but the bottom line is, the right to a trial by jury was well-recognized by our founders as an essential safeguard against the arbitrary exercise of government power, which is exactly what took place . . . a contrived and manufactured conviction of Former President Trump.
The people on Trump’s jury are very much to blame for not exercising their inherent right as members of a jury to give the finger to a tyrannical judge and prosecutor, and refuse to be part of what essentially turned out to be a partially public, but star-chamber court proceeding.
I hope Turley, will take some time and reconsider what a juror’s most important function is, and research why our system guarantees the right to a trial by jury.
Finally, with respect to the jurors, I do not know what was in their minds and hearts. But I do know each of them gave their approval to government force being used by a tyrannical judge, and a notoriously evil politically motivated, Manhattan D.A, to impose unjust pain and suffering upon a fellow citizen of the United States. And for that, I most certainly do blame each juror for their part in ushering in the very type of court proceeding which our founders sought to prevent with the guaranteed right to a public trial and the protection of an impartial jury of one’s fellow citizens . . . citizens who had it in their power to not be party of an abuse of government power.
JWK
“We often give enemies the means of our own destruction.” – Aesop.
The jury instructions were so vague it was possible to find him guilty or not guilty depending on your feelings about him. You didn’t even have to decide which “crime” he was supposed to be hiding.
I blame the jury as well as the DA and Judge.
They let their feelings overcome a beyond a reasonable doubt standard and without consideration of what this is going to do with the credibility of the justice system.
“I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789.
Were the jurors obedient to the Judges orders and instructions? Seems they were, and relinquished their opportunity to tell the judge . . . we don’t need no stinken instructions to arrive at our conclusions. Jefferson has told us:
“It is left… to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact” __ Thomas Jefferson to Abbe Arnoux, 1789.
Trump received a trial by a jury of his peers just like every other criminal defendent gets, if they want it. He’s not special, and no one in maga has a meltdown over any other criminal.
And as I correctly stated in the OP, Turley unwittingly showed a glaring blind spot in his understanding of the American Peoples guaranteed right to a trial by jury. He absolved the jurors of their fundamental duty to stand between a corrupted judge and the accused.
