Time: Sat Oct 04 00:31:34 1997
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Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 23:51:27 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Convicted juror fights to reverse judge's fine (fwd)

<snip>
>
>THE WASHINGTON TIMES
>September 22, 1997
>
>Convicted juror fights to reverse judge's fine
>Woman didn't disclose arrest for LSD
>
>By Valerie Richardson
>
>Feedback: letter@twtmail.com
>
>DENVER--  Living among the hippies and ski bums who inhabit the tiny
>mountain town of Nederland, Colo., is the young hemp activist who has the
>nation's legal community in an uproar.
>
>Her name is Laura Kriho, and she's a 33-year-old research assistant who
>was called two years ago for jury duty in a drug-possession case in
>Gilpin County, Colo. During jury selection, she said nothing about her
>support for legalizing industrial hemp or her arrest at 21 for possession
>of LSD.
>
>Once jury deliberations began, she refused to vote to convict the
>defendant, instead trying to convert fellow jurors to her position by
>discussing the criminal penalties involved and the rights of jurors to
>nullify the law.
>
>When word reached the judge, he declared a mistrial. Two months later, he
>took the highly unusual step of charging Mrs. Kriho with criminal
>contempt of court. She was convicted in March and fined $1200.
>
>Her case is believed to be the first in which a juror has been so charged
>since a jury refused to convict William Penn for preaching to an unlawful
>religious assembly. That was in 1670, and in his case, the appeals court
>sided with the jury, thus establishing the right of jurors to weigh the
>law along with the facts of the case.
>
>Her critics, who include judges, prosecutors and prominent lawyers, have
>blasted her as a rabble-rouser who deceived the court in order to insert
>her pro-drug views into the judicial process. The prosecutor, James
>Stanley, said at the time of her conviction that she "played games" to
>"further her personal agenda."
>
>"This woman would like to make herself out to be a martyr, but what she
>did and failed to do was really not commendable," said Miles Cortez, a
>past president of the Colorado Bar Association.
>
>But her supporters in the jury nullification movement see her as no less
>than a constitutional heroine, someone with the courage to defy the court
>by upholding the jury's historical role as a check on government
>tyranny.
>
>What exactly she is will now be decided by another round of judges. Her
>attorney, Paul Grant of Parker, Colo., filed a brief yesterday with the
>state Court of Appeals, but says he may ultimately leapfrog that body and
>instead bring the case directly to the Colorado Supreme Court.
>
>If she loses, that would clear the path for an appeal to the Supreme
>Court, where Mr. Grant believes the issue ideally should be decided.
>
>"It's unprecedented, prosecuting a juror. It's just out of control," said
>Mr. Grant. "There's too much control by the court and prosecution, and it
>threatens to destroy the purpose of having jury trials."
>
>"The jury is a check on the government's power, and it's not surprising
>the government resents it," he said.
>
>Her conviction has lent legitimacy to the small but resurgent
>jury-nullification movement which is based on the principle that jurors
>should decide whether the law is just or unjust instead of confining
>themselves to the facts of the case. Not surprisingly, groups such as the
>Fully Informed Jury Association have made her their "poster child," she
>says, while helping raise money for her defense.
>
>Even those uncomfortable with jury nullification say her case has raised
>crucial questions about how far the court may go to sanitize a jury of
>any preconceived opinion or bias. Her supporters note that defendants are
>supposed to be tried by juries of their peers, and in places like Gilpin
>County, their peers are bound to include those in favor of some form of
>drug legalization.
>
>"Sure, Kriho has been an active hempie -- a strange but not uncommon
>breed in our mountains," said the Rocky Mountain News in a Feb. 15
>editorial. "But it's not the business of the court to ascertain juries'
>political philosophies. When you command their appearance, you should
>take what you get and be grateful for it."
>
>Critics say the crux of the debate centers on her conduct during the
>jury-selection process, not in the jury room. The case dealt with a
>19-year-old woman accused of felony possession of methamphetamine, and
>Mrs. Kriho was one of the last in a long procession of prospective jurors
>to undergo questioning.
>
>While waiting in the gallery, she heard prosecutors ask prospective
>jurors whether they had ever been arrested. But when it came to her turn,
>she was asked instead, "You listened to all of our topics; would you have
>answered anything differently?" She replied "No."
>
>Mrs. Kriho was picked for the jury, something that prosecutors say never
>would have happened if she had brought up her 1985 arrest for possession
>of LSD. But Mrs Kriho notes that she received a deferred judgment, and
>that the charge was supposed to have been erased from her record after
>two years of probation.
>
>In addition, she argues, prospective jurors were asked about 350
>questions that day. Her crime was failing to do the prosecutors' job by
>volunteering information her attorney said.
>
>"They were trying to compel jurors to volunteer information not connected
>to the trial," said Mr. Grant. "She's being punished for not answering
>questions they didn't ask. Well, jurors aren't going to do that
>--they're intimidated as hell."
>
>But in his ruling against her, First Judicial Chief Judge Henry Nieto
>insisted her crime lay in misleading the court by refusing to reveal her
>past involvement with drugs, not her advocacy for nullification in the
>jury room.
>
>"It is one thing to laud the efforts of a jury fairly picked and honestly
>chosen to decide a case in conformity with their conscience" he wrote in
>his decision. "It is quite another thing for a juror to deliberately
>mislead the court in an effort to obstruct the administration, of
>justice."
>
>For her part, Mrs. Kriho doesn't buy it. "If we'd come back with a guilty
>verdict," she says, "none of, this would have happened."
>###
>
>Washington Times
>3600 New York Ave., NE
>Washington, D.C. 20002
>Phone: (202) 636-3000
>Fax: (202) 269-3419
>Web: http://www.washtimes.com
>Feedback: letter@twtmail.com
>
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>

===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris      : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA;   M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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_____________________________________: Law is authority in written words 09
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice.  We shall 10
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