eurealist.co.uk

But why is it so very important that we retain the right to jury trial, why is Sir Robin wrong to suggest that Juries must have no right to acquit in defiance of the law or in disregard of the evidence, and to suggest that an accused may not be tried by a jury.

To insist on this, is in fact to remove the very basic reason for jury trials, because not only is the jury intended to try the facts of the case, as the peers of the accused they are also entitled, in fact impelled to try the legality of the law itself. Sir Robin being a professional lawyer has ignored the fact that laws made in this country must have the support of the people, and the only way to ensure that is the case, is to allow the jury not to convict if they feel the law itself is unjust.

That we are now being asked to give up the very basic rights to freedom and to hold our government to account, that we have held as a people for over 1000 years, to the powers of the government to do anything they wish, is an insult to the very foundation of the British peoples right to be governed by their own laws, they are our own laws because we accept them, and we enforce them, not the government, not the judges, but us the people have the final power to refuse to accept a law we feel is unjust by refusing to find someone guilty.

Essay on the Trial by Jury(1852) Lysander Spooner
The jury was an essential safeguard of liberty long before the American Revolution. British courts guaranteed the independence of criminal trial juries in 1670, in a case concerning four jurors who had acquitted William Penn for illegally preaching about his Quaker beliefs. Those jurors were imprisoned for their “not guilty” verdict because they had ignored the trial judge’s instructions to vote for Penn’s conviction. An English appellate court released the jurors from prison, establishing the principle that juries cannot be punished for bringing in the “wrong” verdict. The freedom of American jurors to vote according to conscience can be traced to that landmark precedent. The purpose of trial by jury, as the Supreme Court itself has noted, is to prevent “oppression by the government.” To perform that role, jurors must act independently and conscientiously, and they must be prepared to “just say no” if they believe that a conviction would be unjust
Jurors in early America knew that if a criminal law was unjust, they could — and should — refuse to enforce it. They could vote their conscience, and as free citizens they were expected to do so. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” John Adams said, “It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”
“The trial by jury,” then, is a “trial by the country” —that is by the people as distinguished from a trial the government
The object of this trial “by the country,” or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or “the country,” judge of and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government’s judging of and determining its own powers over the people. How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government; if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?

Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other — or at least no more accurate — definition of a despotism than this.

The Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union has very little to say about the rights of the accused.

TITLE VI: JUSTICE
Article II-47:
Right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial
Everyone whose rights and freedoms guaranteed by the law of the Union are violated has the right to an effective remedy before a tribunal in compliance with the conditions laid down in this Article.
Everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal previously established by law.
Everyone shall have the possibility of being advised, defended and
represented.
Legal aid shall be made available to those who lack sufficient resources in so far as such aid is necessary to ensure effective access to justice.
Article II-48: Presumption of innocence and right of defence
1. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
2. Respect for the rights of the defence of anyone who has been chargedshall be guaranteed.

Everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal previously established by law. Everyone shall have the possibility of being advised, defended and represented. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved
guilty according to law. Respect for the rights of the defence of anyone who has been charged
shall be guaranteed.

What an independent and impartial tribunal is the charter does not say, but what it is not is a trial by a jury of ones peers. Mainland European courts consist of professional judges, not jurors or lay magistrates thus doing away with Habeas Corpus and Jury trials.

Mainland Europe does not have the 1000 years of legal history that is based on Common Law or English Common Law.

Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
The English reading of this has always been understood to be, if you are innocent you therefore are free. In Britain the Act of Habeas Corpus 1679 clarified and helped to enforce already existing common law rights with regard to detention by public authorities. The writ of Habeas Corpus, directed those having custody of a prisoner to produce the body (habeas corpus) of the prisoner with a statement to justify his detention. Basically, it entitles an arrested citizen to be brought before a court and charged, within 60 hours of arrest.

If a person is innocent, he then of course has no need to prove he is not guilty, therefore, because of the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof must remain with the prosecution, i.e. they must actually prove the persons guilt before they can be punished or imprisoned . Not only that but they must prove that guilt to a jury of the accused peers.

“In Britain and the island countries throughout the English-speaking world, liberty is understood to mean liberty from arbitrary arrest and incarceration, as safeguarded by Habeas Corpus and trial by jury: a judicial system which is unknown anywhere on the European continent.

A great difference between the Civil Law and the Common Law is that the Civil law holds that every man — and every nation — is guilty until he has proven himself to be innocent whereas the Common Law holds that every man — and every nation — is innocent until he has been proven guilty”. Michael A Clark

SIR ROBIN AULD’S REPORT
Sir Robin proposes that magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts be unified in a single criminal court structure with a new third intermediate District Division to be created. Cases would be tried, according to their seriousness and the likely maximum sentence, either by magistrates, by judge and jury, or in the new District Division by a professional judge and two lay magistrates
The defendant should no longer have an elective right to trial by judge and jury in ‘either-way’ cases. The allocation should be the responsibility of the magistrates’ court alone and exercisable where there is an issue as to venue by a District Judge.

The defendant would have no right of election to be tried in any division. (In the event of the present court structure continuing, the defendant should lose his present elective right to trial by jury in ‘either-way’ cases I consider that the law should be declared, by statute if need be, that juries have no right to acquit in defiance of the law or in disregard of the evidence. I consider also that judges and practitioners in their conduct of criminal cases should acknowledge that truth and not invoke the ability of a jury to defy the law or breach their oath in that way. I recommend that the law should be declared, by statute if need be, that juries have no right to acquit defendants in defiance of the law or in disregard of the evidence, and that judges and advocates should conduct criminal cases accordingly.

Also from “Some weekend reading” Europhobia
Internet Politics 2004: The Good, The Bad and the Unknown
By John Palfrey, 12/07/2004 - 6:29pm

In advance of this weekend’s “Internet & Society Conference: Votes, Bits and Bytes,” sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, we are pleased to publish an advance copy of John Palfrey’s discussion paper on the role of the Internet in changing politics, looking forward from 2004. We invite readers and participants in the conference to add their comments below.
The Editors.

Most political campaigns today have an “Internet strategy” of one sort or another. The smashing of online fundraising records, bloggers who broke stories of international importance, citizen-journalism institutions that moved elections, new voters lured into the political fray through cool online campaigns-within-a-campaign – the election cycles in the last few years in the United States and elsewhere around the world have given rise to headlines and head-spinning about the power of the Internet to transform political action.

We’ve been down the road before of thinking that the Internet changes everything. That plainly wasn’t true with respect to commerce, nor is it true here with respect to politics. But the Internet has, in a few instances – such as South Korea in its most recent presidential election and that here in the United States – made a notable difference in terms of how campaigns were conducted and how individuals engaged in civic life at various levels. The model provided by the Internet – with power at the edges and in the connections between them, as opposed to vested in one centralized hub – makes intuitive sense in the political arena, where the aim inevitably is to reach out – to voters, to local organizers, to donors. These effects are reminiscent of the ways that eBay, Google, Amazon, digital music, and VoIP have substantially changed a variety of industries in the commercial arena. The puzzle is to pull apart what’s real from what’s hype.
more

Following on from my post earlier Combating Propaganda I received this by e-mail, I would suggest that there is no “European Mind Set” about these things, the Europeans suffered equally from the wars, probably more so, because the ground war was fought in their towns villages and over their countryside,it is the “EU Mind Set” that wishes to eradicate anything that could conceivably conflict with its own views history.

Also in the same e-mail Jane Birkby complains of the blatantly pro-EU slant of weekly encyclopaedia by DK Publishing, which the Daily Mail has been offering at a fixed price with the newspaper. “History has been sanitised and given the EU slant, with omissions etc. throughout the set and the EU is already written in as a state in its own right. The propaganda is blatant.” It would be extremely funny if it were not so serious, they just keep on telling us the EU is not a state is not going to be a state and does not intend to become a state, yet they keep on treating exactly in the same way as any other state.

Media Release 10 December 2004

EU withdraws ´History´ book that forgot two world wars

UK - MEP wins apology

The European Parliament today withdrew its history of Europe written for schoolchildren, following complaints by Ashley Mote MEP, who sits as an independent for SE England.

The ´history´ - intended to be volume one of a series - was published in October. The section on the UK omitted all reference to two world wars, which Mr Mote described as “an insult to the memory of millions of Britons who gave their lives to preserve freedom and democracy on the continent of Europe”.

The president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell Fontelles, in a letter to Mr Mote, today admitted: “The brochure in question was clearly ill-judged. It has been withdrawn from circulation.”

He went on: “I regret any offence the brochure has given. Action has been taken to ensure that the circumstances which led to publication cannot recur.”

Ashley Mote commented: “At least justice and common sense have prevailed. But this incident has exposed the real tragedy today, which is a European mind-set that wants to pretend these dreadful events never happened.

“We cannot allow the ultimate sacrifice made by the fallen of both world wars to be whitewashed like this from the pages of history. Nor can we surrender what they achieved.”

(end)

Ashley Mote’s website is at
www.ashleymote.co.uk

Quite a lot accually

Europhobia:

“Some weekend reading”

Europhobia has a list of links to several interesting EU based stories. It being Sunday perhaps the few below to start with, they are all about Europe the EU and religion.

Europhbia has a great link to the Action Institute which has gathered together the different strands of the Rocco Buttiglione affair with the original Official Transcripts of the European Commission Committee on Legal Affairs, Articles about Rocco Buttiglione.

Then the Guardian article Is Europe split by religion

And two more links one to Commentary Magazine and the other to the Times both commenting on Islam in Europe.

Ironies:
“Balance in Teaching about the EU

CAMPAIGN FOR BALANCED INFORMATION
President: Professor Antony Flew

CITIZENSHIP FOR 11-16 YEAR-OLDS
(Personal and Social, or Modern Studies, in some parts of the UK)

BRITAIN AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

We believe that a considerable amount of pro-European Union material from government and EU sources is being presented to schools involved in teaching the above course.
The Campaign is concerned to ensure that a balance of information is made available to pupils which is factual and not party-political. As education professionals, we wish to redress what we believe to be a serious omission. In order to comply with the 1996 Education Act, Sections 406 and 407, schools are required to provide unbiased information.
Two education professionals, Joy Squire and Iris Binstead, have prepared a package which contains information on the Euro, Human Rights, democratic self-government and various aspects of the law. Accompanying this are four transparencies for overhead projection, which give a visual aspect to learning. Also enclosed is a video.”

Thanks to Martin Cole for the post The EU would have us belive that they have a right to inform their Citizens but when they are spending millions each year in educationnal material we ahould question the balance of that materila obviously the Campaing For Balanced Information has decided that balance is lacking in the matrerial they may well have looked some of the relevent Papers from The Bruges Group I have posted links two two of them below;

How the EU uses education and academia to sell integration

Federalist Thought Control: The Brussels Propaganda Machine

The Amsterdam Treaty
There is in Article 209a, a one-line statement that “such measures shall not concern the application of national criminal law and the national administration of justice”.

The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, during the Amsterdam treaty debate, told British MPs that it was relying entirely on this safeguard to stop Corpus Juris.

However, on 11 February 1998, in a report presented to the EU Parliament by Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs, M. Bontempi, described quite clearly and exactly how they intend to get round this statement. “if the matter is disputed it will be sent for adjudication by the European Court of Justice, where Britain has no national veto”.

Now how might they actually do this to be fair “ such measures shall not concern the application of national criminal law and the national administration of justice” is pretty clear and not in the least ambivalent.

But the ECJ is not a court in the true sense of the word it is supposed to rule on the treaties which it does and nine times out of 10 it rules in favour of the EU and further integration. It takes its remit from the Preamble of the treaties “closer union” this it takes as the pure guiding light behind all the treaties that they are the evidence of the clear wish of the member states ambition to achieve ever closer unity.

The court would look at the legal obligations Britain had entered into when ratifying the treaty; this is argued quit clearly in the report “Ratification Bottleneck”

The Principal of good faith
Once a treaty has been signed the state must abstain from any conduct that could compromise full application of the treaty once it has entered into force. It is also argued that the principal takes on a more importance in the sphere of international organisations given the special cooperative relations lat link members state in achieving common goals. (Member states ambition to achieve ever closer unity)

and

The Principal of loyal Cooperation
The ECJ has repeatedly underlined the principal of loyal cooperation. The court will decide if the action of refusing to agree to the introduction of Corpus Juris would be considered compatible with the obligations of loyalty and solidarity.

In fact as I mentioned in the previous post the same paper “Ratification Bottleneck” has suggested that they should enact some things before the ratification of the Constitution, one of these is “Space of Freedom Security and Justice. The Constitution extends the role of the EU Parliament in many matters immigration judicial and police cooperation, the paper suggests that the Council could commit itself now to closer cooperation with the parliament in these areas in line with the new provisions.

The Constitution would exclude the Court’s jurisdiction (only) where the action of the Member States “is a matter of national law”.
The words at first sight appear to mean that the ECJ has no competence over matters which have no EU element. In principle the ECJ has no competence in fields which belong to the exclusive competence of the Member States” the problem is that police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters falls within the shared competence of the Union and the Member States as part of the area of freedom, security and justice, so that in practice it might be difficult to establish in what situations maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security was purely a matter of national law rather than Union law.

A shared Competence is in fact a misnomer because what it means in practice is that the state may make laws within this area as long as the EU has not. However, once the EU decides to rule in this area it become the sole province of the EU.

HOUSE OF LORDS European Union Committee 6th Report of Session 2003-04

We note that the draft Treaty would substantially increase the Court’s powers from those currently set out in Article 35 TEU. The draft Treaty would bring judicial co-operation in criminal law and police co-operation within the same overall framework of judicial control as applies to other areas of EU law.

Under the draft Treaty the jurisdiction of the Court has been extended. The draft Treaty would bring judicial co-operation in criminal law and police cooperation within the same overall framework of judicial control as applies to other areas of EU law.

Note; the Lords refers to the Constitution as a Treaty, this is because they could not decide if it was a Treaty or a Constitution, it cannot be both, a treaty is an agreement between sovereign states, and a constitution is an agreement between a state and its people. This is a treaty establishing a constitution and refers to both the states and the people.

EU Fraud and EU official’s immunity from prosecution;
the main reason for introducing Corpus Juris is to protect the EU budget from “the need for effective protection of the Community budget, particularly in connection with fraud against subsidies”
The only problem with this is that all of the EU Commissioners and high ranking civil servants who might be at some stage suspected of high level fraud, are exempt from the process of law outlined in Corpus Juris.

The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities issued a damning report on `Corpus Juris’, the EU’s plan for a common criminal code and the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor. Entitled “Prosecuting Fraud on the Communities’ Finances - The Corpus Juris”, the Select Committee’s report raises serious objections on the grounds that it would involve major changes to UK criminal law, it lacks a proper legal basis in the EU and EC Treaties, there are serious questions about its feasibility, the EPP would not be accountable to elected to democratically elected representatives and there is inadequate protection for defendants rights.

On 1st December, 1999, Romano Prodi, the E.U. Commission President, said clearly that the national veto in matters of justice must be got rid of: it is like a “ball and chain” around Europe’s ankle.