Food Not Bombs trial rescheduled after too many jurors objected to $500 fine for feeding homeless
Food Not Bombs trial rescheduled after too many jurors objected to $500 fine for feeding homeless
Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows' attorney.
So much time, effort, and resources wasted towards trying to fine someone $500 for doing something humane. Our "leaders" are out of touch with reality. Can we fine them for wasting our tax dollars on shit that doesn't matter?
with "leaders", the best course of action usually involves guilliotines.
You really believe that? I've had way too many conversations with people that generally support the mentality of the stick over the carrot.
My cousin, totally not super conservative or anything, just gen x, was talking about how Mike Tyson (I think) had said his son couldn't box like him cause he didn't know what it was like to be hungry. I was just like, is that important for us to have boxers?
Stop telling them this in advance! They can't get at your work material or deliberations. Just give them a general affirmative and go on to nullify that shit.
Also, at the point you can't seat a jury because they're telling you they won't convict there has to be some kind of slaughter rule. To stop wasting the court's time if nothing else. Because at some point you're just letting the prosecutor choose a verdict, not a jury.
Exactly. Well put
Don't lie under oath, but you also don't have to scream from the hilltops that the whole damn system is out of order and ensure that someone who is heavily invested in punishing the people for feeding the homeless gets your spot in the jury instead.
What the fuck did I just read?
Humans arrested and charged for feeding hungry and needy humans
That's a level of Freedom ©®™ I just cannot comprehend
That's fucking evil
You'll fucking love this one then: Ohio pastor charged for opening church to homeless people in freezing weather
Welcome to America!
Home of the fuck you i got mine
Worse: they think they got theirs but didn't. The group most likely to experience homelessness? Boomers. The group most entering the workforce? People over 75 years old.
An entire generation worked so hard to put their vision of the world out there but couldn't see that they were destroying their own future in the process.
Somehow freedom morphed into Free Dumb.
Believe it or not, it used to be illegal in most places to be in public if you were maimed or deformed. We're talking veterans will be arrested for walking down the street. The reason? Good christian folk suffer when they see it, it has to be kept out of sight.
This is the 20th century version of that.
Making me look up the source 😡
You're breaking the money chain! Believe it or not, prison.
So the DA is just allowed to say, "I don't like any of my choices in this jury pool" and that's just okay?? That doesn't sound like a fair trial at all. It's like grabbing the stack of lottery tickets from behind the counter and starting to scratch them off. When somebody comes to make you stop you just say, "it's all good. I'm just trying to find one I like before I decide to play the lottery today."
The process of jury selection is complex. It good that it’s this way, however it can be abused if the system itself (meant to keep it working properly) breaks down. One of the most important elements in that is that the officers of the court (both lawyers and the judge) are operating honestly and in good faith.
So, you see the problem.
To over-simplify, as I understand things...
There's a variety of reasons a juror can be rejected, with one of them being "the juror is not willing to follow the law, as written". This seems to be what's happening here, the law says that if a person does X, the penalty is fine Y, and these jurors are saying "I would not issue fine Y even if you prove they did X."
To an extent, this is the system working they way it's supposed to, one of the checks on unreasonable laws is being unable to find people willing to enforce them in good conscience.
Although that process can also be heavily abused, such as when all white juries would routinely find white defendants not guilty when they very obviously lynched black people.
How simple can this be?
Could I convict someone for a victimless crime that helped people? The answer is yes. Yes of course I could. I could also have an affair, blow up my car, do a naked tap dance on my boss' desk, tell my kids that I don't love them, and finish the day trying to underwater basketweave.
If the laws of the physics does not prevent me from doing something the answer to the question "can I x" is yes. If the question is it likely well that is a much different story.
People have to learn how to jury nullify properly
Unfortunately this is a very cut and dry indication of intention of jury nullification, and that is a reason to dismiss a potential juror. They shouldn't have said anything and then nullified once they actually got on the jury.
Not even intent, even the risk that someone has the ideological basis that could justify nullification in that case is enough to throw them out.
It's actually why it took a while to prosecute the boston marathon bombers, because the jury selection ran face first into the fact that the jury pool was bostoners and bostoners lean pretty sharply against the death penalty, which is what the prosecutor was after.
Both parties get a certain number (like 2 or 3) chances to excuse anyone, no reason required. Outside of that, you're raising technical reasons to the judge and the judge does the dismissing. If the judge doesn't buy the reason and the other party doesn't object, they may just end up on the jury.
This makes sense to me, but I also think that you shouldn't be able to dismiss the jury en masse more than once. Jury pools are what, 20-30 people? If they can't find 12 people and/or set 1 doesn't work out for some reason and the judge agrees, you get one more shot and either accept the hand you're dealt or drop the case.
When something of similar scope happens to the defense they can ask for a change of venue, and if it's granted that's it. The trial proceeds.
Jury Nullification! Tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell everyone. Take back our country.
Yeah but pipe down about it during jury selection, they screen for us.
Weird how it works. The one time I got jury duty I was ready to nullify and got given a case where the accused was accused of a raping a 11 year old.
Hmm I don't think I am going to nullify that particular law. Sounds like a good one to keep on the books.
They rejected me anyhow, guess the defense didn't want a parent of young daughters on the jury for some strange reason
Yeah but here's the thing, if they can prove you knowingly steered the jury towards nullification post selection they'll prosecute you for perjury because the screening questions basically total up to "Would you nullify a guilty verdict? Yes or No?", so doing it on purpose and being too obvious about it can get you put in front of your own jury.
Too many jurors… don’t know about jury nullification.
Jurors are expressly prevented from being educated on the third option to avoid its use.
This actually is a great example of jury nullification. From https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-nullification-faq/what-is-jury-nullification.html talking about a different case:
Of 27 potential jurors questioned during voir dire, only five said they would vote to convict a person of possession of such a small amount of marijuana. Skeptical that it would even be possible to seat a jury, the judge in the case called a recess during which time the lawyers worked out a deal known as an “Alford plea” in which the defendant didn’t admit guilt.
When these kinds of rejections of enforcement of laws stack up over time, the laws become unenforceable. We’ve seen this rejection of the Fugitive Slave Laws and alcohol prohibition, for example, undermine such laws’ enforcement. Eventually, it is no longer worth the time or hassle or embarrassment for government officials to try to enforce these laws. They may be further nullified in a sense either remaining on the books but not being enforced or being repealed altogether.
So when these potential jurors said they wouldn't fine someone for feeding the homeless, it's one brick in the wall. Get enough bricks and all of a sudden the law is unenforceable.
This is an excellent writeup, thank you.
To get there they'd have to risk being charged with perjury since it sounds like they were directly asking that question.
Only if they could prove it
I always wonder what they'll do if I start chatting about it with other people during the selection process.
Everyone should know about Jury Nullification.
For better or worse, Jury Nullification's validity is highly debatable. Its history is also mixed. It was used by juries to acquit people who were charged against the Fugitive Slave Act. It was also used in the Jim Crow era to acquit white people of lynching black people.
At a systemic level, its validity is kind of irrelevant because any time you ask a human being to judge whether a law is broken, there's no way to prevent them from saying no because they don't agree with the law. Prosecutors and judges can try to weed out jurors who will answer based on their conscience rather than just facts, but they can't eliminate the possibility.
On a personal level, I can recognize nullification is easy to abuse, but if I'm on a jury and I'm asked to convict someone of breaking an unjust law, I could not in good conscience sacrifice that person's freedom just because another juror in a different trial could do the same thing for bad reasons.
As the question of whether nullification should be promoted, I think it should, because people have a right to know how their government works as part of their right to choose how it works. A government whose most fundamental mechanisms can't hold up to public security is ipso facto authoritarian and undemocratic.
It's called Perverse Jury in the UK and it's always caused major shocks when it's happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#England_and_Wales
Judges don't like it and politicians have considered making it illegal. It's been really heating up recently (2021 & 2023) with environmental protestors being acquitted after juries refused to find them guilty.
Judges have tried to avoid it in those cases by blocking the defendent from explaining their moral argument. People were acquitted of the crime but then convicted of contempt of court for breaching the judges orders.
They wouldn't have to feed the homeless if the city did a better job at helping them.
If not even California can make meaningful steps towards permanent supportive housing, it sure as shit won't happen in Texas.
In CA, like everywhere, it's just a problem of money. NYC has a mandate to offer everyone temporary housing if they need it. Recently Texas and Florida have strained the system by sending thousands of migrants to NYC (100K total).
Most of them are able to find temporary housing because the city pays for it. The SF Bay Area and Los Angeles could easily do the same, but they just don't want to spend the money. They need to raise taxes slightly and get it done.
There's a GIGANTIC difference: CA is trying, TX is not.
Or if they shot the homeless.
Put me on the jury. If the city can make a convincing case that permits are needed to ensure safe food handling practices are being followed, and that permits are granted freely when reasonable requirements are met, they'll get their fine (they won't).
Ok, you're on.
So what happens if they just can't find anyone willing to say the fine is okay?
They'll just postpone it indefinitely and keep trying to find a jury pool.
It'll probably get dismissed. You have a right to a fair and speedy trial (6th Amendment) as long as you don't waive the speedy trial which happens and is why some people spend years in prison without a trial...and probably plea out eventually.
When people want to know what anarchism is, it’s this organization. In many places where it operates it isn’t legal, but what good is the law when it stands between people and freely feeding their community.
And if you don’t have a local chapter and want to you can just start your own. There’s like four rules and you don’t need to get approval, from anyone. It’s completely decentralized. Hell you can operate one across the street from another.
Humanity prevails
LOL the city leaders are so desperate to act out their cruelty and cannot understand that the citizenry is capable of human empathy.
I mean most of them aren't inherently evil at least not more evil than they are lazy. I'm sure if they were given the chance to just ignore the homeless population they would much prefer that. But they're wealthier constituents the business owners and the elite don't like seeing the homeless people around and they don't like the increased crime that comes with it. Having a homeless population around does have some ramifications. It does make a number of their constituents uneasy and they would be very happy to get rid of the problem.
They're trying to make them more uncomfortable so they move on. It's not a good answer it's not a moral answer it's not a right answer but it's not just out of pure evil. Most of them anyway.
Where are the benevolent philanthropists to show us the light with their "elite" luminary brains?
See, this is the shit American and Canadian cities waste time and resources on instead of actually helping people in need.
Can't read due to paywall
The place this group chose to feed people was creating a nuisance and they were asked to move it elsewhere. They were given an acceptable place just a few blocks away, and refused to move. The story has been sensationalized to make it seem Houston is against helping the homeless.
Yeah, think of the property values. Move all the homeless a few blocks away and lower their property values until a developer buys up the whole block and then push them somewhere else. Rinse and repeat.
More like blocking the sidewalk and spilling out into the streets right in front of the main library and city hall, so please move a couple of blocks to a parking lot.
I dont think that's the full story?
and in Houston, they'd been doing so outside Central Library downtown for roughly two decades. In 2012, the city passed a law against giving free meals to people in need without permission, but Mayor Annise Parker's administration gave permission to Food Not Bombs. That position was reversed by former Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Right. People complained about the library location blocking the sidewalk, so they were asked to move. The city in no way is against feeding the homeless.