United States News
See other United States News Articles
Title: Florida Woman Found Not Guilty of Marijuana Cultivation (Jury Nullification)
Source:
Marijuana.com
URL Source: http://www.marijuana.com/blog/news/ ... ilty-of-marijuana-cultivation/
Published: Sep 17, 2016
Author: Monterey Bud
Post Date: 2016-09-17 21:06:32 by Hondo68
Keywords: Not Guilty, legal, Maine to Florida
Views: 9947
Comments: 53
Bridget Kirouac, a medical marijuana patient who relocated from Maine to Florida, and who suffers from debilitating bone spurs, was found not guilty of cultivating medical marijuana in her Martin County home. BREAKING: Bridget Kirouac found NOT GUILTY of cultivation and possession of cannabis. More tonight on @WPTVpic.twitter.com/KTNuuRqXd7 — Jason Hackett (@JHackettWPTV) September 16, 2016 Informing the sympathetic jury, “I’m not a criminal, I’m a patient,” Kirouac told the attentive courtroom. “All I’m trying to do is survive.” Kirouac used marijuana Kirouac explained to the courtroom that she was an MMJ patient in the state of Maine with a valid recommendation for medical marijuana before relocating to the Sunshine State for its warmer climate. She held back tears while explaining her struggle with pain. “When you get to that point, and you tried as many of the options that are available to you as I have…dying becomes a very attractive prospect,” she said. The prosecution focused on the fact that medical marijuana was not legal at the time of her offense. They were ultimately handed a historical defeat with the jury’s not guilty verdict for Bridget Kirouac. Poster Comment: A jury of your peers has determined that growing weed is legal. THE END 
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 19.
#3. To: hondo68 (#0)
Hallelujah!! This was the second medical marijuana case that Michael Minardi has won in Florida. The first was the case of Jesse Teplicki. If you are ever charged with marijuana possession in Florida, be sure to cite the binding precedent of Florida v. Bridget Kirouac, opinion of the jury. That judge is a spoilsport.
You're really kind of an asshole, taking delight in the pain and suffering of others. Not just this thread either - it's pretty much the same on any post you make about medical marijuana users. Let's get one thing straight - the government does not own our bodies and as such has no business telling anyone what they may or may not use to medicate themselves.
Not just this thread either - it's pretty much the same on any post you make about medical marijuana users. Not taking delight, just not taking your blathering bullshit. Marijuana is illegal. Marijuana is not medicine. That is the law, like it or not. Jury nullification is just fine. It does not change any law. It does not say marijuana is legal. It says the jury, based on the fasts of the case, found rendering a guilty verdict in the case before them would be an injustice. They are empowered and free to render a not guilty verdict. They do not change the law. Each future defendant will have to roll the dice on a verdict, knowing that they have violated the law. And arguing nullification to the jury is prohibited.
--- arguing nullification to the jury is prohibited. Why is arguing nullification before a jury prohibited, -- if,-- " Jury nullification is just fine." ???
Why is arguing nullification before a jury prohibited, -- if,-- " Jury nullification is just fine." ??? You quote an OPINION by Justice Jay: --- So you return to the same old silly argument, -- that 'we must hold firmly to the doctrine', --- court opinions MUST be treated as 'law'. -- You're wrong..
#25. To: tpaine (#19)
(Edited)
--- where the matter is not controlled by express constitutional or statutory provisions, it cannot be regarded as the right of counsel to dispute before the jury the law as declared by the court. * * * We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence.[13] So you return to the same old silly argument, -- that 'we must hold firmly to the doctrine', --- court opinions MUST be treated as 'law'. -- You're wrong.. And you are an ingnorant asshole displaying your assholery. You post responds to yourself at #16. At #17 I quoted from one case, U.S. v. Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002 (4th Cir. 1969). Moylan gave the correct precedent, and you are full of shit, as usual. The quote from Moylan reads: Moylan has a footnote 13: "Sparf and Hansen v. United States, supra n. 6 at 101-102, 15 S. Ct. at 293." At the footnote 13 cited case, pp. 101-02, Sparf says: 156 U.S. 102 citizens against unjust and groundless prosecutions, would depend entirely upon juries uncontrolled by any settled, fixed, legal principles. And if it be true that jurors in a criminal case are under no legal obligation to take the law from the court, and may determine for themselves what the law is, it necessarily results that counsel for the accused may, of right, in the presence of both court and jury, contend that what the court declares to be the law applicable to the case in hand is not the law, and, in support of his contention, read to the jury the reports of adjudged cases and the views of elementary writers. Undoubtedly, in some jurisdictions, where juries in criminal cases have the right, in virtue of constitutional or statutory provisions, to decide both law and facts upon their own judgment as to what the law is, and as to what the facts are, it may be the privilege of counsel to read and discuss adjudged cases before the jury And in a few jurisdictions, in which it is held that the court alone responds as to the law, that practice is allowed in deference to long usage. But upon principle, where the matter is not controlled by express constitutional or statutory provisions, it cannot be regarded as the right of counsel to dispute before the jury the law as declared by the court. Under the contrary view - if it be held that the court may not authoritatively decide all questions of law arising in criminal cases -the result will be that when a new trial in a criminal case is ordered, even by this court, the jury, upon such trial, may of right return a verdict based upon the assumption that what this court has adjudged to be law is not law We cannot give our sanction to any rule that will lead to such a result. We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence. Upon the court rests the responsibility of declaring the law, upon the jury, the responsibility of applying the law so declared to the facts as they, upon their conscience, believe them to be. Sparf quotes Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U. S. 1 (1794) from an opinion by Chief Justice John Jay. The quote, as given by Sparf, is recited below, a bit more completely. That early 1794 jury civil case was annihilated as any sort of precedent to the effect of espousing jury nullification in criminal or general cases by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sparf and Hansen v. United States,, 156 U.S. 51 (1895) which I have previously quoted to your dumb ass, and which is the case cited in the footnote to which you refer here. As noted below, Georgia v. Brailsford 3 U.S. 1 (1794) was examined by the U.S. Sureme Court in Sparf, and the whole case was considered an anomaly. It was a trial by jury in the U.S. Supreme Court. The jury, so-called, was a panel of experts chosen for their expertise on the subject. The U.S. Supreme Court granted cert in one case about jury nullification in 1894 and decided in 1895. That case, Sparf and Hansen v. United States,, 156 U.S. 51 (1895), forever put your insane bullshit to bed. Deal with it. As Moylan noted in 1969, as I quoted: And since 1969, add about another half-century to that standing precedent. As you have been previously informed of this, I am sure you are merely being an asshole. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/156/51/case.html U.S. Supreme Court Sparf and Hansen v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895) Sparf and Hansen v. United States No. 613 Submitted March 5, 1894 Decided January 21, 1895 In the courts of the United States, it is the duty of the jury, in criminal cases, to receive the law from the court, and to apply it as given by the court, subject to the condition that, by a general verdict, a jury of necessity determines both law and fact as compounded in the issue submitted to them in the particular case. [156 U.S. 63] Opinion of the Court The court below assumed, and correctly, that section 1035 of the Revised Statutes did not authorize a jury in a criminal case to find the defendant guilty of a less offense than the one charged unless the evidence justified them in so doing. Congress did not intend to invest juries in criminal cases with power arbitrarily to disregard the evidence and the principles of law applicable to the case on trial. [156 U.S. 64] Opinion of the Court The general question as to the duty of the jury to receive the law from the court is not concluded by any direct decision of this Court. But it has been often considered by other courts and by judges of high authority, and, where its determination has not been controlled by specific constitutional or statutory provisions expressly empowering the jury to determine both law and facts, the principle by which courts and juries are to be guided in the exercise of their respective functions has become firmly established. [156 U. S. 64-65] Opinion of the Court In Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 Dall. 1, 3 U. S. 4, a case in this Court tried by a special jury upon an amicable issue, Chief Justice Jay is reported to have said: Of the correctness of this report, Mr. Justice Curtis in United States v. Morris, 1 Curtis 23, 58, expressed much doubt, for the reason that the Chief Justice is reported as saying that, in civil cases — and that was a civil case — the jury had the right to decide the law, and because also the different parts of the charge conflict with each other, the Chief Justice, according to the report, saying at the outset that it is the province of the jury to decide questions of fact, and of the court to decide questions of law, and in the succeeding sentence informing the jury that they had the right to take upon themselves the determination of both law and fact. If the Chief Justice said that it was the province of the court to decide questions of law, and the province of the jury to decide questions of fact, he could not have said that the jury had the right, in a civil case, to judge of and determine both law and fact. "The whole case," Mr. Justice Curtis said, [156 U. S. 82 - 86] Opinion of the Court 156 U. S. 83 In Pierce v. State, 13 N.H. 536, 554, it was held to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution that questions of law, and, still less, questions of constitutional law, should be decided by the verdict of the jury contrary to the instructions of the court. In Duffy v. People, 26 N.Y. 588, 591, Judge Selden, speaking for the Court of Appeals of New York, said: See also People v. Finnegan, 1 Parker's Cr.Cas. 147, 152; Safford v. People, 1 Parker's Cr.Cas. 474, 480. So, in Hamilton v. People, 29 Mich. 173, 192, Mr. Justice Campbell, as the organ of the court, said: "We understand the uniform practice and the decided weight of opinion to require that the judge give his views of the law to the jury as authority, and not as a matter to be submitted to their review." And in People v. Anderson, 44 Cal. 65, 70: "In this state it is so well settled as no longer to be open to debate that it is the duty of a jury, in a criminal case, to take the law from the court." 156 U. S. 84 The principle was accurately stated by Chief Justice Ames, speaking for the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, when he said: State v. Smith, 6 R.I. 33, 34. In Pennsylvania, in the case of Commonwealth v. Sherry (reported in the appendix to Wharton's treatise on Homicide, pp. 481-482), Judge Rogers, a jurist of high reputation, thus charged the jury in a capital case: 156 U. S. 85 About the same time, Judge Sergeant charged a jury: Commonwealth v. Van Sickle, Brightly (Penn.) 73. To the same effect, substantially, was the language of Chief Justice Gibson, who, when closing a charge in a capital case, said, "If the evidence on these points fail the prisoner, the conclusion of his guilt will be irresistible, and it will be your duty to draw it." Commonwealth v. Harman, 4 Penn.St. 269. In a more recent case, Kane v. Commonwealth, 89 Penn.St. 522, Sharswood, C.J., said that the power of the jury to judge of the law in a criminal case was one of the most valuable securities guarantied by the bill of rights of Pennsylvania. But in a later case, Nicholson v. Commonwealth, 96 Penn.St. 505, it was said: In Commonwealth v. McManus, 143 Penn.St. 64, 85, it was adjudged that the statement by the court was the best evidence of the law within the reach of the jury, and that the jury should be guided by what the court said as to the law. And this view the court, speaking by Chief Justice Paxson, said was in harmony with Kane v. Commonwealth. The question has recently been examined by the Supreme Court of Vermont, and after an elaborate review of the 156 U. S. 86 authorities, English and American, that court, by a unanimous judgment, overruling State v. Croteau, 23 Vt. 14, and all the previous cases which had followed that case, said: State v. Burpee, 65 Vt. 1, 34. These principles are supported by a very large number of adjudications, as will be seen by an examination of the cases cited in margin.{2} [156 U. S. 106 - 107] Opinion of the Court, conclusion 156 U. S. 107 argument was the other way. He wisely observed that, United States v. Morris, 1 Curtis 62, 63. The questions above referred to are the only ones that need be considered on this writ of error.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest A jury of your peers has determined that growing weed is legal.
“It’s been extraordinarily stressful…emotionally draining” Kirouac says but the judge says her acquittal doesn’t mean she is free to use medical marijuana.
#4. To: nolu chan (#3)
(Edited)
#9. To: Deckard (#4)
You're really kind of an asshole, taking delight in the pain and suffering of others.
#16. To: nolu chan (#9)
Jury nullification is just fine. It does not change any law. It does not say marijuana is legal. It says the jury, based on the fasts of the case, found rendering a guilty verdict in the case before them would be an injustice. They are empowered and free to render a not guilty verdict. They do not change the law.
#19. To: All, nolu spam, wrong again (#16)
--- where the matter is not controlled by express constitutional or statutory provisions, it cannot be regarded as the right of counsel to dispute before the jury the law as declared by the court. * * * We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence.[13]
Replies to Comment # 19. You quote an OPINION by Justice Jay: ---
But upon principle, where the matter is not controlled by express constitutional or statutory provisions, it cannot be regarded as the right of counsel to dispute before the jury the law as declared by the court. * * * We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence.[13]
Public and private safety alike would be in peril, if the principle be established that juries in criminal cases may, of right, disregard the law as expounded to them by the court and become a law unto themselves. Under such a system, the principal function of the judge would be to preside and keep order while jurymen, untrained in the law, would determine questions affecting life, liberty, or property according to such legal principles as in their judgment were applicable to the particular case being tried. If because, generally speaking, it is the function of the jury to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused according to the evidence, of the truth or weight of which they are to judge, the court should be held bound to instruct them upon a point in respect to which there was no evidence whatever, or to forbear stating what the law is upon a given state of facts, the result would be that the enforcement of the law against criminals and the protection of
The Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Sparf and Hansen v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 15 S. Ct. 273, 39 L. Ed. 343 (1895), affirmed the right and duty of the judge to instruct on the law, and since that case the issue has been settled for three-quarters of a century.
[156 U.S. 51] Syllabus
"It may not be amiss here, gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury, on questions of law it is the province of the court, to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have, nevertheless, a right to take [65] upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. On this and on every other occasion, however, we have no doubt you will pay that respect which is due to the opinion of the court, for as on the one hand it is presumed that juries are best judges of facts, it is, on the other hand, presumable that the courts are the best judges of the law. But still both objects are lawfully within your power of decision."
"was an anomaly. It purports to be a trial by jury in the Supreme Court of the United States of certain issues out of chancery, and the Chief Justice begins by telling the jury that the facts are all agreed, and the only question is a matter of law, and upon that the whole court were agreed. If it be correctly reported, I can only say it is not in accordance with the views of any other court, so far as I know, in this country or in England, and is certainly not in accordance with the course of the Supreme Court for many years."
This question was also fully considered in Montee v. Commonwealth, 3 J. J. Marsh. 132, 149, 151, in which case Chief Justice Robertson said:
"The circuit judge would be a cipher, and a criminal trial before him a farce, if he had no right to decide all questions of law which might arise in the progress of the case. The jury are the exclusive judges of the facts. In this particular they cannot be controlled, and ought not to be instructed, by the court. They are also,
necessitate, the ultimate judges, in one respect, of the law. If they acquit, the judge cannot grant a new trial, how much soever they have misconceived or disregarded the law. . . . If the court had no right to decide on the law, error, confusion, uncertainty, and licentiousness would characterize the criminal trials, and the safety of the accused might be as much endangered as the stability of public justice would certainly be."
"The unquestionable power of juries to find general verdicts, involving both law and fact, furnishes the foundation for the opinion that they are judges of the law as well as of the fact, and gives some plausibility to that opinion. They are not, however, compelled to decide legal questions, having the right to find special verdicts, giving the facts, and leaving the legal conclusions which result from such facts to the court. When they find general verdicts, I think it is their duty to be governed by the instructions of the court as to all legal questions involved in such verdicts. They have the power to do otherwise, but the exercise of such power cannot be regarded as rightful, although the law has provided no means, in criminal cases, of reviewing their decisions, whether of law of fact, or of ascertaining the grounds upon which their verdicts are based."
"The line between the duties of a court and jury in the trial of causes at law, both civil and criminal, is perfectly well defined, and the rigid observance of it is of the last importance to the administration of systematic justice. Whilst, on the one hand, the jury are the sole, ultimate judges of the facts, they are, on the other, to receive the law applicable to the case before them solely from the publicly given instructions of the court. In this way, court and jury are made responsible, each in its appropriate department, for the part taken by each in the trial and decision of causes, and in this way alone can errors of fact and errors of law be traced, for the purpose of correction, to their proper sources. If the jury can receive the law of a case on trial in any other mode than from the instructions of the court, given in the presence of parties and counsel, how are their errors of law with any certainty to be detected, and how, with any certainty therefore to be corrected? It is a statute right of parties here -- following, too, the ancient course of the common law -- to have the law given by the court, in their presence, to the jury, to guide their decision, in order that every error in matter of law may be known and corrected."
"You are, it is true, judges in a criminal case, in one sense, of both law and fact, for your verdict, as in civil cases, must pass on law and fact together. If you acquit, you interpose a final bar to a second prosecution, no matter how entirely your verdict may have been in opposition to the views expressed by the court. . . . It is important for you to keep this distinction in mind, remembering that while you have the physical power, by an acquittal, to discharge a defendant from further prosecution, you have no moral power to do so against the law laid down by the court. . . . For your part, your duty is to receive the law, for the purposes of this trial, from the court. If an error injurious to
the prisoner occurs, it will be rectified by the revision of the court en banc. But an error resulting from either a conviction or acquittal against the law can never be rectified. In the first case, an unnecessary stigma is affixed to the character of a man who was not guilty of the offense with which he is charged. In the second case, a serious injury is effected by the arbitrary and irremediable discharge of a guilty man. You will see from these considerations the great importance of the preservation, in criminal as well as in civil cases, of the maxim that the law belongs to the court, and the facts to the jury."
"The point, if you believe the evidence on both sides, is one of law, on which it is your duty to receive the instructions of the court. If you believe the evidence in the whole case, you must find the defendant guilty."
"The court had an undoubted right to instruct the jury as to the law, and to warn them as they did against finding contrary to it. This is very different from telling them that they must find the defendant guilty, which is what is meant by a binding instruction in criminal cases."
"We are thus led to the conclusion that the doctrine that jurors are the judges of the law in criminal cases is untenable; that it is contrary to the fundamental maxims of the common law from which it is claimed to take its origin; contrary to the uniform practice and decisions of the courts of Great Britain, where our jury system had its beginning and where it matured; contrary to the great weight of authority in this country; contrary to the spirit and meaning of the Constitution of the United States; repugnant to the Constitution of this state; repugnant to our statute relative to the reservation of questions of law in criminal cases, and passing the same to the supreme court for final decision."
The main reason ordinarily assigned for a recognition of the right of the jury in a criminal case to take the law into their own hands, and to disregard the directions of the court in matters of law, is that the safety and liberty of the citizen will be thereby more certainly secured. That view was urged upon Mr. Justice Curtis. After stating that, if he conceived the reason assigned to be well founded, he would pause long before denying the existence of the power claimed, he said that a good deal of reflection had convinced him that the
"[a]s long as the judges of the United States are obliged to express their opinions publicly, to give their reasons for them when called upon in the usual mode, and to stand responsible for them not only to public opinion, but to a court of impeachment, I can apprehend very little danger of the laws' being wrested to purposes of injustice. But on the other hand, I do consider that this power and corresponding duty of the court authoritatively to declare the law is one of the highest safeguards of the citizen. The sole end of courts of justice is to enforce the laws uniformly and impartially, without respect of persons or times or the opinions of men. To enforce popular laws is easy. But when an unpopular cause is a just cause; when a law, unpopular in some locality, is to be enforced — there then comes the strain upon the administration of justice, and few unprejudiced men would hesitate as to where that strain would be most firmly borne."
End Trace Mode for Comment # 19.
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]