{"id":60738,"date":"2016-10-28T11:30:40","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T16:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60738"},"modified":"2016-10-28T19:18:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T00:18:42","slug":"nullified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60738","title":{"rendered":"Nullified (Not!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We don’t know what happened in the jury room in Oregon yesterday – but as we noted last night, a jury acquitted all of Ammon Bundy’s group of all charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The decision smells like jury nullification – the notion that a jury can invalidate bad law by not finding people guilty of it.<\/p>\n

Say what you will about the Bundy clan and their methods, but the original charge that led to the fracas – the “setting a fire in federal property” rap that arose from a controlled blaze that became not-so-controlled and overlapped federal property in the trackless waste of eastern Oregon – was a crock and needed to be nullified.<\/p>\n

And, as a lot of libertarian Westerners (or as the Southern Poverty Law Center would refer to them, “terrorists”) have been talking about for a long time, the jury would have none of it.<\/p>\n

The feds don’t like being denied:<\/p>\n

Ammon Bundy’s lawyer Marcus Mumford argued that his client, dressed in a gray suit and white dress shirt, should be allowed to walk out of the court, a free man.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown told him that there was a U.S. Marshal’s hold on him from a pending federal indictment in Nevada.<\/p>\n

“If there’s a detainer, show me,” Mumford stood, arguing before the judge.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a group of about six U.S. Marshals surrounded Mumford at his defense table. The judge directed them to move back but moments later, the marshals\u00a0 grabbed on to him.<\/p>\n

“What are you doing?” Mumford yelled, as he struggled and was taken down to the floor.<\/p>\n

As deputy marshals yelled, “Stop resisting,” the judge demanded, “Everybody out of the courtroom now!”<\/p>\n

Mumford was taken into custody, a member of his legal team confirmed.<\/p>\n

Ammon Bundy’s lawyer J. Morgan Philpot, said afterwards on the courthouse steps that Mumford had been arrested and marshals had used a stun gun, or Taser, on his back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jurors (apparently) nullified the charges because, one suspects, they believe the feds have become an authoritarian bureaucracy. \u00a0The feds then give them evidence to support the thesis.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be an interesting four years.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0Not nullification<\/a>? \u00a0No problem. \u00a0Good guys win either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We don’t know what happened in the jury room in Oregon yesterday – but as we noted last night, a jury acquitted all of Ammon Bundy’s group of all charges. The decision smells like jury nullification – the notion that a jury can invalidate bad law by not finding people guilty of it. Say what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,286,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-police-powers","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60746,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60738\/revisions\/60746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}