JURY NULLIFICATION IS A WAY TO FIX DRUG WAR FIASCO

If you are called to serve on a jury and the judge, or bailiff, or
whoever, catches you with a copy of this column, quickly stuff it in
your mouth, chew it and swallow it. Stomach acid will dissolve the
paper and they'll never be able to prove a thing. Take similar action
if caught with page 50 of the March 17 Time magazine.

Then, if you are asked what you know about jury nullification, lie and
say you never heard of it. If you stick to your story, they can't touch you.

I realize I'm telling you to do something illegal (the part about
lying, anyhow) but only because I know many judges do worse things.
Jury nullification is perfectly legal, and any judge who tells you
otherwise is the one telling whoppers.

I'll get back to that, but first there is a Lehigh Valley man who
thinks "The Wire," a fictional cop show on HBO, was "very
nitty-gritty, about problems in a city." The show recently ended
after five seasons, dealing with the way the news media cover the war
on drugs and other issues.

I never did see it, but Mike Ring of Allentown noticed a Time magazine
article that was written by six of the show's writers, and he felt the
article echoed some of the views I have expressed about the so-called
war on drugs.

He said it "offers a suggestion to put an end to our failed drug
policy. ... It's not a complete solution, but it certainly would be a
workable start."

The article was written by David Simon, creator of "The Wire" and
five colleagues. He was formerly at the Baltimore Sun, The Morning
Call's sister paper, and was known for his in-depth reporting on the
drug war and police operations.

The drug war, observed the Time article, "grinds on, flooding our
prisons, devouring our resources, turning city neighborhoods into
free-fire-zones," all with one main result -- America now has "the
world's highest rate of imprisonment."

(That resonated with Ring, who told me he once was told by a top local
politician that "the biggest item of the budget is the Lehigh County
Prison.")

Another result of the drug war, the article said, is that law
enforcement people must spend less time on crimes in which innocents
are harmed or killed -- while politicians refuse to tell the truth
about drugs and instead "compete to prove themselves more draconian
than thou, to embrace America's most profound and enduring policy failure."

Sound like an echo? It does if you read much of my stuff, except that
I do not use such gentle terms to describe the wholly corrupt war on
drugs.

The Time article observed that Thomas Paine called for civil
disobedience to thwart the "flawed national policy of his day." So,
along those lines, its six writers made a vow.

"If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or
federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence
presented," they said. "No longer can we collaborate with a
government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its
poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens."

That is jury nullification, and it is a noble concept. The article
noted it goes back to the press freedom case of John Peter Zenger in
colonial times.

I have argued in favor of jury nullification for years, not just in
drug cases but in any case where a juror feels there is abuse of
government power.

No matter what lies a judge spouts, you have an absolute right to vote
not guilty if you do not like the way the government pursued its case,
or even if you simply dislike the law used to prosecute somebody.

Some states accommodate jury nullification instructions by judges, but
in states like Pennsylvania, prosecutors will move to oust jurors who
indicate they might exercise that right. So you need to keep quiet
about it until it's time to deliberate in a jury room.

Then, it takes only one out of 12 to confound a reprehensible policy,
as Simon and his TV co-writers have proposed.

Perhaps, after a few hundred hung juries in a row, authorities will
get off their rumps and start going after thugs who harm the innocent,
instead of pathetic junkies who harm only themselves.