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Title: Georgia man grows pot. Admits it. Jury sends him home
Source:
WSB-TV Atlanta 2
URL Source: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/ge ... -jury-sends-him-home/799784904
Published: Jul 27, 2018
Author: Bill Torpy for the AJC
Post Date: 2018-07-27 16:13:24 by Hondo68
Keywords: Jury Nulification, respect for the law, this was about fairness
Views: 7271
Comments: 64
DUBLIN, Georgia - This article was written by Bill Torpy for our investigative partners at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and AJC.com. Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, "Yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine." The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison. The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Georgia, may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been jury nullification, another case of citizens saying prosecutions for pot are not worth law enforcement agencies' time and effort -- or the impact on otherwise law-abiding people’s lives. It was the second such win in the Laurens County circuit for Atlanta attorney Catherine Bernard, a conservative Republican who’s also a staunch civil libertarian. Late last year, another client of hers fessed up to a jury that he had sold a couple of nickel bags to an insistent undercover drug cop. That client was cut loose after just 18 minutes of deliberation. And this is no liberal soft-on-crime region. Donald Trump won the county 2-1. Bernard also helped get North Georgia authorities to drop charges against the parents of a 15-year-old whose parents allowed him to smoke pot to help combat severe seizures. Ultimately, what may have kept McCoy out of an orange jumpsuit was that his lawyer urged the jury to empower themselves. She told them they are not potted plants or an unthinking arm of government. They, in fact, are the government. She read to the jury a section from the Georgia Constitution that says, “The jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts.” Bernard said the judge chided her for bringing that up, but it seems the words sank in. The case started when police were called to McCoy’s mobile home four years ago. McCoy’s half-brother had allegedly attacked him with a stick and McCoy grabbed his .22-caliber rifle, the one he uses to hunt squirrels, and shot his sibling in the shoulder. Police found several potted plants in McCoy’s bedroom and tagged him with several charges including aggravated assault and manufacturing marijuana, a felony that can bring 10 years. The case stalled in the system and McCoy decided to go to trial. Right before the trial, the state dropped the assault accusation but kept the pot felony charge. (Prosecutors did not respond to my messages.) McCoy was offered eight years’ probation, Bernard says, but chose to fight the case. During trial, McCoy decided to testify. He had little choice. He was caught red-handed. He said his attorney told him, “Talk to them. They will connect with you.” He gulped and sat in the witness box, telling jurors that 15 years ago he was mugged and beaten into a coma. He has suffered migraines and depression and ended up self-medicating with pot “because Zoloft turned me into a zombie.” Prosecutors “tried to make it look so bad, that I was selling it. But I had nothing to hide,” McCoy told me, explaining his decision to testify. “The jurors had their eyes on me. I had my eyes on them.” “Marijuana makes you eat,” McCoy told the jury. “It made me feel calm. It made me relax. It helps with my pain.” He is a country guy who lives by “hustling” -- painting, landscaping, selling fish, driving people to the store. Ultimately, he said, “We had a jury you could relate to. Truck drivers, mechanics, construction. People who worked. They saw I wasn’t bothering nobody. That’s what I believe they felt.” Bernard said she doesn’t coach defendants before testifying because juries pick up on that. “I think they appreciated his honesty.” People in Dublin have respect for the law, Bernard said. But this was about fairness, about properly using law enforcement resources. “In America we leave someone alone if they are not bothering somebody,” Bernard said. “A world where he needs to be dragged away by armed men and put in a cage is not a world where people want to live.” She doesn’t like the term jury nullification. “It brings up a negative image. It’s simply part of being a jury. The jury judges the law and the facts.” Denise de La Rue, a jury consultant not involved in this case, said, “Jurors are really interested in justice. There are often cases of no loss, no foul. There’s no real victim here.” That’s pretty much what the jurors said. A couple said the case presented to them by prosecutors was a mess because the lawyers had to avoid talking about the shooting. In fact, the jurors I spoke with never even knew the missing charge involved a shooting. Two of them said “second chances” also played heavily into their verdict. Lizzie Mae Davis said, “He was believable. He wasn’t trying to make money. He had it to ease his health.” Davis said she really has no problem with people using pot — “as long as they’re not around me.” Juror Brian Loyd said of the verdict, “Sometimes good things happen to good people.” Kenneth Thompson, who works in construction, said jurors liked that McCoy was “forthright.” Ultimately, they decided, the man didn’t deserve to get tossed into the slammer. “If he’s disrupting the peace and dignity of the state, well, a lot of us said he wasn’t bothering anybody,” Thompson said.
Poster Comment: Libertarians are winning in Georgia. A waste of taxpayer dollars paying cops to bust people for victimless crimes. Fire them, give out tax rebates, and a tax cut too.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 46.
#3. To: hondo68 (#0)
Bernard said the judge chided her for bringing that up, but it seems the words sank in. So his lawyer told them about jury nullification and got away with it. She's lucky I'm not that judge.
Yeah America is lucky you aren't in charge of anything. John Jay said it is the jurors duty to judge law and fact. Since you don't know much about the constitution. I'm pretty sure you never heard of John Jay.
Mark Pull man said:
I also know that statement is pure bullshit.
I also know that statement is pure bullshit. Maybe it’s bullshit….and then maybe it’s not We must remember that the Constitution is definitely a LAW and it is considered the SUPREME LAW of the land, according to which our country will work. If jury nullification is okay and it acts like a “kangaroo court, to NULLIFY a LAW in that the jury ignores recognized standards of law or justice granted under the Constitution, while intentionally disregarding LEGITIMATE LAWS and judicial authority established by the Constitution, then the a jury can NULLIFY the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution which is of course known as the Bill of Rights. A jury can do this by acting under the guise of JURY NULLIFICATION. A jury can’t nullify the Constitution? The Constitution is a LAW and under jury nullification a jury can nullify a law….any LAW. Right? Think about it … And while you are thinking about it…reflect on the old proverb: “There is no such thing as being half pregnant”. Back to this: Can’t it?
Can’t it? Only on a case by case basis. The jury cannot set a precedent to be followed. The jury does not have a "right" to nullify a law. They have immunity from prosecution for what they do as jurors. Such nullification remains a legal wrong, but is not prosecutable. Another jury, viewing a case with identical facts, could follow the law and vote to convict.
Perhaps more of a "procedural wrong" as per standard court rules, yet not a lawful wrong as in a violation of the law, as you pointed out. Calling it a "legal wrong" casts it in an vague light, I submit.
#53. To: Pinguinite (#46)
When they are instructed by the court as to what law to apply, and they act in deliberate defiance of the court, they do something contrary to law. The D.C. Bar calls such action by the jury an abuse of its power. Whatever it is to be called, nullification is not a legal right. In U.S. v. Kleinman, 14-50585 (9th Cir., 4 Apr 2017), the Court concluded, We conclude that the district court erred by instructing the jury that “[t]here is no such thing as valid jury nullification,” and that it “would violate [its] oath and the law if [it] willfully brought a verdict contrary to the law given to [it] in this case.” However, because there is no right to jury nullification, the error was harmless. We find that Kleinman’s remaining challenges on appeal are without merit, and AFFIRM his conviction and sentence. https://www.dcbar.org/bar-resources/legal-ethics/opinions/opinion320.cfm D.C. Bar Jury Nullification Arguments by Criminal Defense Counsel [excerpt] The District of Columbia has no rule or statute authorizing jury nullification. Both the local courts and the federal courts have rejected assertions that juries are entitled to an instruction apprising them of their “right” to nullify the law. See United States v. Washington, 705 F.2d 489 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (fact that juries can abuse their power and return verdicts contrary to the law does not mean that courts must give such instruction); Reale v. United States, 573 A.2d 13 (D.C. 1990) (trial court not required to instruct jurors about their power of jury nullification). Indeed, both federal and local courts in this jurisdiction have endorsed jury instructions that are designed to discourage jury nullification. See, e.g., United States v. Pierre, 974 F.2d 1355 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (approving jury instruction that jury “should” return a guilty verdict if the government has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt); United States v. Braxton, 926 F.2d 1180 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (same); Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706 (D.C. 1976) (en banc) (jury instruction may discourage nullification). Moreover, the standard jury instruction given in District of Columbia courts contains this express admonition to the jury: “You may not ignore any instruction, or question the wisdom of any rule of law.” Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, Instr. 2.01 (Bar Assn. of D.C. 4th ed. 1993). Within this jurisdiction express exhortations to ignore the law are, therefore, likely to be deemed prohibited by law and may, therefore, result in violations of the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct by lawyers who advocate such a course. See D.C. Rule 8.4.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestShe read to the jury a section from the Georgia Constitution that says, “The jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts.”
#11. To: misterwhite (#3)
#13. To: A K A Stone (#11)
Is jury nullification good or bad? The debate over jury nullification highlights the differences between libertarians, some of whom are “minarchists” uneasy with the constraints on individual autonomy inherent in the state, and classical liberals, who view civil society as indispensable to secure their liberty. Fundamentally, laws are necessary to preserve a free society, not—as libertarians suppose—inherently symbols of abject coercion. Freedom is not possible without the rule of law. Conceptually, jury nullification— selectively suspending the law—is “anarchy in a microcosm.” As a classical liberal, I view it as brazen lawlessness and a prescription for arbitrariness.
What say you?
#15. To: Gatlin (#13)
Freedom is not possible without the rule of law.
#16. To: A K A Stone (#15)
(Edited)
If the law is unconstitutional in my view not guilty 100 percent of the time.
I agree, if the law is unconstitutional. Freedom is not possible without the rule of law.
Is it now? Freedom is not possible without the rule of law.
If the jury can take away the Bill or Rights by jury nullification, and under jury nullification a jury can declare a law invalid so it can be disregarded….then without the rule of law, a jury can take away our freedom by nullifying the Bill of Rights under jury nullification
#41. To: Gatlin, A K A Stone (#16)
If the jury can take away the Bill or Rights by jury nullification, and under jury nullification a jury can declare a law invalid so it can be disregarded….then without the rule of law, a jury can take away our freedom by nullifying the Bill of Rights under jury nullification
#46. To: nolu chan (#41)
Such nullification remains a legal wrong
Replies to Comment # 46. Calling it a "legal wrong" casts it in an vague light, I submit.
Ethics Opinion 320
Thus, at a minimum defense counsel must necessarily conform their conduct to the substantive law of the jurisdiction in which the lawyer is appearing. See D.C. Rule 8.5(a); see also Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers § 105 (2000) (“a lawyer must comply with applicable law, including rules of procedure and evidence and specific tribunal rulings”). In this jurisdiction, such substantive law appears to preclude express advocacy of the jury nullification power.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 46.
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