Session: State Capitol, Room 102 Juneau, AK 99801-1182 Toll Free: (877) 465-3719 Phone: (907) 465-3719 Fax: (907) 465-3258 Personal Web Site: www.johncoghill.com Interim: 119 N Cushman Street, Suite 211 Fairbanks, AK 99701 Phone: (907) 456-5081 Fax: (907) 456-8245

Sponsor Statement for HB 463
Informed Jury

"An Act relating to juries; and providing for an effective date."

House Bill 463 places in statute clear language that was set in place by our founding fathers and reinforced by our courts through the years. It provides for juries to determine if a defendant is guilty according to the law and if that law was unjustly applied to the defendant. The bill also gives the defendant the right to inform the jury that they can vote on the verdict according to conscience.

Jury nullification goes back to the Magna Carta, which King John reluctantly granted in 1215 for fear of the people dethroning him. In 1679 William Penn was acquitted of preaching Quakerism to an unlawful assembly. The four jurors who voted to acquit were imprisoned and starved until they paid fines. Edward Bushell, a juror in the case, refused to pay the fine and took his case to the Court of Common Pleas. Since the Magna Carta jurors were routinely fined and even jailed for making decisions contrary to the want of government. In the Court of Common Pleas ruling in the Bushell case, Chief Justice Vaughan ruled that jurors could not be punished for their verdicts.

The government interference with juries of peers for 570 years were fresh in the minds of our founding fathers when they wrote Article VII of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton felt juries would reduce the "temptations, which the judges might have to surmount." Federalist No. 83. Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Through America's history the courts have ruled for jury nullification. Supreme Court Justice John Jay ruled in a Georgia civil forfeiture case that the jury has "a right … to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." Georgia v. Brails ford, 3 U.S. 1 (1794). As recent as 1986, the Georgia Supreme Court in ruled that a "Jury in criminal cases possesses de facto power of 'nullification,' to acquit defendant regardless of strength of evidence against him. Cargill v. State, 255 Ga. 616, 340 SE.2d 891 (1986).

HB 463 reasserts the nullification of juries in a time when juries have felt judges have restricted their deliberations and strict interpretation of the law. This legislation has resulted in part by just such a jury in Fairbanks last year.

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