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NILES — During the councilmember reports portion of Monday’s Niles City Council meeting, members of the council had the opportunity to provide updates and insight on regional work and activities if they wished to do so.

Fourth ward councilmember Michael Thompson spoke in length about the concept of jury nullification.

“This is from the Fully Informed Jury Association of fija.org: 

Jurors are the judges in trial by jury. The judge’s role is to referee the event and get neutral legal advice to jurors. This includes fully informing them of their rights and responsibilities. Early American trial judges would inform jurors of the right to judge the law as well as the facts. This permitted attorneys to do so as well, allowing them to argue successfully for conscientious acquittals. What changed? Judges began locally obstructing jury veto power in earnest during the 1800s in order to coerce reluctant jurors to enforce unjust and unpopular laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act. 

“Today, judges rarely inform jurors of their right to judge the law itself and to vote ‘not guilty’ even if the law has been broken, when this is necessary to deliver a just verdict. Rather, judges aid prosecutors by dismissing both prospective and sworn jurors who expressed qualms about the law who know about their right and conscientious acquittal and consider using it. Once jurors are seated, judges want to disinform them with stern or bullying instructions that imply or directly state that jurors “must” or “will” convict if the law was broken.

“Today, jurors still have the right to exercise jury nullification in order to conscientiously acquit, but judges and prosecutors do their best to keep that right secret. Jurors cannot be punished for their verdicts. Fija.org has many resources regarding this and there’s a specific section for attorneys and judges for those who are interested in learning more.

“The reason why I bring this up is because of all the rules that are coming about by state and federal governments that are targeting individuals. At some point, that’s going to come around to Christians because of your beliefs. This is already happening in England and France, where if you say anything anti-gay, anti-woke or whatever, you can be arrested and put in prison for it.

That’s coming here and the way you defend yourself is through jury nullification.”

Second ward councilmember Tim Rogers spoke about a recent jury duty experience and encouraged community members to attend the Berrien County Youth Fair this week.

“I had the occasion to get a jury summons here and served by jury time sitting at the house this last week; just had to call in the day before to find out if you need to run up to St. Joe and be part of a panel. Having served in the Houston metro area in Harris County, Texas and knowing what a pain it is to have to drag yourself down for a ‘cattle call’ of over 500 people for jury duty, this is a much better way to do business. It saves a lot of gas and aggravation. 

“The second thing is to let it remind everybody that the Berrien County Youth Fair started today. I spend my time up there, at least one shift a day all week at the public education building for the County Firefighters Association but there’s a lot of good things going on up there and a lot of good entertainment. If you’ve got the time, I’d say go on up for a while these days.”

Mayor Nick Shelton congratulated the RadioShack team in attendance for the meeting and also commented on the decision to place the park maintenance millage proposal on the Nov. 5 ballot.

“Congratulations to the RadioShack crew there. Not only on the loan, but for bringing your business to downtown Niles. It’s going to be a great addition and it already sounds like it has been, so I’m excited for you guys. Regarding the ballot question, I’m glad we’re bringing this to the public. A splash pad, specifically, is a topic I’ve heard about longer than the eight years I’ve been in office and one of the highest demands that members of our community have had and I’m glad we’re bringing it back to the citizens to make that decision and I’m interested to see how that goes in November. And congratulations on all of the people who ran for office and who are moving out from the primary.”