J.A.I.L.'s Purpose: To Threaten
Judges With Blackmail (Gazette-Times)
Gazette-Times
Corvallis, Oregon
November 15,
2005
Keep judiciary strong and
independent
Almost every day, a letter to the editor arrives regarding Amy Stack's
pending sentencing hearing. But unlike most letters, these are not
addressed to the readers or editors of the newspaper; they are
addressed to Judge Locke Williams of the Benton County Circuit Court.
The heartfelt message is expressed in varied ways, but it is
essentially the same:
Stack, 28, was not adequately held legally accountable in connection
with her role in the 2004 hit-and-run death of bicyclist Robin Jensen,
18. The letters speak of the devastating loss of Jensen. Most take
Williams to task for not admitting at trial some of the prosecution's
evidence that could have alerted jurors to the possible involvement of
alcohol. The letters conclude by urging the judge to impose the maximum
sentence possible during Stack's sentencing hearing, scheduled for
Thursday.
One letter writer candidly said the letters
were part of an organized effort to sway the judge's decision. "Our
goal is a letter a day until the sentencing," the writer said.
Not all of the letters were published, only
those that addressed readers and raised relevant issues. Besides, we
doubt that judges formulate legal decisions based on how many letters
are published on the editorial page.
The judiciary is supposed to be an impartial filter of laws and
precedents. But the idea that justice is too often hijacked by the law
is feeding a growing dissatisfaction with judicial authority. It is
rooted in the belief that this authority is too absolute.
In fact, that isn't so. Judges are challenged all the time. They are
removed from the bench for judicial misconduct; their decisions are
overturned on appeal; they are voted out of office. Yet this growing
discontent, as evidence by the often-heard grumbling about "activist
judges," is fueling an effort in South Dakota to put a measure on the
ballot that would strip judges of their immunity from prosecution.
The goal of this measure is to reverse a century of prosecutorial
immunity for judges, presumably to afford citizens � what? � the right
to threaten judges with blackmail if they don't rule the way a litigant
wanted, rather than what the evidence and the law requires?
That's certainly a fast road to chaos, and we trust the voters in South
Dakota to see the folly in yanking that thread from the fabric of our
constitutional democracy.
The legal system has not yet finished with the matter of the
hit-and-run death of Robin Jensen. Aside from whatever sentence is
imposed Thursday, we foresee a change in state laws that modifies the
penalties for leaving the scene of an accident without checking for
injury when serious injury or death had resulted.
Our interest as citizens should be to strengthen and make more
equitable the laws that protect us all, not to undermine the process by
which those laws are administered.
The Oregon Gazette-Times has lost all perspective
of American History in setting forth that J.A.I.L. in South Dakota
will blackmail judges, so it is time they receive a refresher
course on history. Our Founding Fathers founded
this country on the very same principles the Gazette-Times
now blasphemes. We call to witness the voices of those
down through American History.
It was Thomas Jefferson, the famed author of our
current and respected Declaration of Independence unanimously
adopted by Congress July 4, 1776, who said, "The constitution, on this
hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which
they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be
remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever
power in any government is independent, is
absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people
is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be
trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently
independent of all but moral law." ~ Thomas
Jefferson
Notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson, the
Gazette-Times believes that the People cannot be trusted, and that they
must surrender their power to the judiciary, i.e.,
"Keep judiciary strong and independent." This is the very
thing our Founding Fathers feared, and sought to avoid.
It was Patrick Henry, the man who
affirmed, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me,
give me liberty or give me death." who said at our Constitutional
Convention, "Power is
the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power
between three branches of government, and created checks and balances
to prevent abuse of power by each branch. But where is the check on the
power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary,
I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson affirmed the fears of Patrick
Henry, "The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary
independent of the nation, and which, from the
citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to
defend, and control and fashion their proceeding to its own
will."
Further, he said, "The germ of destruction of
our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body
- working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today
and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a
thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render
powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become
as venal and oppressive as the government from which we
separated." "At the establishment of our constitutions,
the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and
harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon
showed us in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that
the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them
a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions,
seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and
unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions,
nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping little and little,
the foundations of the Constitution, before anyone perceived that
invisible and helpless worm had been busily employed in consuming
its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if
secured against all liability to account."
What he contended was that if America
would be destroyed, it will be through a strong and
independent judiciary. In other words, if Thomas Jefferson were
alive today, he would strongly condemn the words of the Oregon
Gazette-Times.
Senator
Sam Ervin stated, "... judicial verbicide is calculated to
convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to
replace our government of laws with a judicial
oligarchy."
U.S. Court of
Appeals Judge Edith Jones on February 28, 2023 stated, "The
American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond
recognition."
In our May 28,
2004 J.A.I.L. News Journal entitled "Why Democracies Fail" we set
forth, "The internal collapse of
all nations require the concurrence of a nation's
judiciary, and without such concurrence, there can be
no police state established. Through the passage of more
and more laws, with its attendant finger-pointing of blame,
People begin to discover hypocrisy, and thus they will
learn from government to disrespect law and authority until
there is a complete collapse into anarchy and
bondage."
More recently, on November
14, 2005 we published a J.A.I.L. News
Journal entitled, "Beware of The Phrase: Independence of the Judiciary"
Therein we completely destroyed the common notion of "Judicial
Independence," showing it means exactly the opposite of what those
opposing J.A.I.L. attempt to teach. "Independence" as applied to
the three branches of government, is always a sword, never a shield. It
is for the exercise of power against the other two branches of
government. Otherwise, pray tell, how could there exist an independent
system of checks and balances of the three branches of government
if judicial independence meant what the
Gazette-Times attempts to interpret it to mean? It
couldn't!
- Ron Branson