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ARE "COMMON LAW" GRAND JURIES VALID?

Posted by TJ McCann on December 15, 2014 at 1:00am

INTRO: With "common law" grand juries currently gaining popular attention,and various attempts to "institute" and apply these occurring across the country, these issues are obviously increasing in frequency, and should be examined.   Some current examples are the case in Dixie County Florida, where Terry Trussell is facing 14 felony charges for "Impersonating a Pubic Officer" and "Unlawful Use of Simulated Legal Process", among other charges, now facing the possibility of the remainder of his life behind bars, or the Nevada common law grand jury claiming to have proved the "missing" 13th Titles of Nobility amendment was actually ratified by Virginia and thereby an actual amendment to the Constitution, or  National Liberty Alliance's own "Quo Warranto" (pdf) petition to various federal judges.

ARE SO-CALLED "COMMON LAW" GRAND JURIES VALID?

Some have claimed that Common Law Grand Juries are supported by the Constitution itself, and even cite  Supreme Court decisions, particularly United States v Williams (1992), as supporting these ad hoc common law grand juries.  However these claims do not appear to have any actual truth to them.

The only place the U.S. Constitution specifically references "common law" is the 7th Amendment, where it is an incidental reference in regard to legal suits, and then is only to affirm the right to trial by jury, not affirming the "common law" as any sort of guiding philosophy of this country, nor referencing "common law" grand juries in any way.

In 1992, Antonin Scalia made citations to the Grand Jury in United States v Williams, and referenced a few Supreme Court cases in doing so:

Hannah v. Larche (1960): "Rooted in long centuries of Anglo-American history.”

United States v. Chanen (1977, citing Nixon v. Sirica, 1973): "the grand jury is mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but not in the body of the Constitution. It has not been textually assigned, therefore, to any of the branches described in the first three Articles. It is a constitutional fixture in its own right.”

Scalia also stated: “the grand jury is an institution separate from the courts, over whose functioning the courts do not preside…”

Scalia there also indicated:

“In fact, the whole theory of its function is that it belongs to no branch of the institutional Government, serving as a kind of buffer or referee between the Government and the people. See Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 218 (1960); Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 61 (1906); G. Edwards, The Grand Jury 28-32 (1906). Although the grand jury normally operates, of course, in the courthouse and under judicial auspices, its institutional relationship with the Judicial Branch has traditionally been, so to speak, at arm’s length. Judges’ direct involvement in the functioning of the grand jury has generally been confined to the constitutive one of calling the grand jurors together and administering their oaths of office. See United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 343 (1974); Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 6(a). [504 U.S. 36, 48] “


Of note, all of the above references are specifically to “Grand Jury” and nowhere particularly indicating “common law grand jury”, thereby not serving to validate those common law grand juries, contrary to claims.   In fact the idea of an ad hoc common law grand jury being formed entirely independently of the the judicial system is undermined by Scalia’s above statement, “in the courthouse and under judicial auspices”.  These Supreme Court references in no way serve to validate “common law grand juries”, as they are currently being envisioned and formed, but rather provide cause to question their validity.

The claim is made that these common law grand juries actually have precedent in American history, which is somewhat true, but overall inaccurate.  During America's early history, when there were municipalities or districts without any established court of their own, circuit judges would indeed travel from district to district and rely on the presentment "charges" of such common law grand juries in order to hold trials.  However these grand juries were not formed from hand-picked jurors, resulting in a stacked jury, nor did they involve claims of absolute authority above any existing courts, as is currently being done.  There is no validation for what is currently being done in America's past, or Britain's common law either. 

Attorney Leo Donofrio, who led two of the earliest court challenges to Obama's qualification to hold the Presidency in New Jersey and Connecticut, has also been an early proponent of using Grand Juries to pursue government wrong-doing. In fact Donofrio wrote an early article titled "The Federal Grand Jury is the 4th Branch of Government", in which citizens use these Grand Juries to counter and correct government wrong-doing and corruption. However Donofrio later removed that article from his blog when a Georgia Grand Jury, allegedly inspired by Donofrio himself, indicated it had authority to confiscate people's property, and even take their homes, which would be criminal acts.


That article is still available on the Internet "Wayback" archive site here:
 The Federal Grand Jury is the 4th Branch of Government

Take note, in that article title Donofrio specifies that it is the "Federal" Grand Jury that is the 4th branch of government, not just any Grand Jury, and notably not "common law".


Donofrio then wrote an article titled, "The Georgia Citizens Grand Jury Must Be Condemned" in which Donofrio made the following clarification of his previous discussion of FEDERAL Grand Juries:

We are governed by our Constitution, not common law.

My grand jury 5th amendment “power of presentment” articles were meant to educate people as to their power ONCE SWORN IN AS A FEDERAL GRAND JUROR in a federal court.

The articles weren’t meant to encourage citizens to form their own grand juries and prosecute at will. There is no such guarantee in the Constitution. And I am a true believer in the Constitution. Are you?


Here Donofrio indicates that there is no such authority for people to independently form their own "common law" Grand Jury, under the belief they might prosecute "at will".

Unfortunately we have very extreme, ill-formed, and even dangerous beliefs held by these common law grand jury proponents, none of which are valid. 

The  National Liberty Alliance indicates (pdf) that the source of authority for these common law grand juries is the common law itself, stating, ""The Common Law is the jurisdiction that our founders set in motion when creating the United States of America" and "Common Law is Natural Law, America was founded on Common Law."  None of these claims are even remotely true.  This country's original foundation in British common law, did not involve any separate jurisdiction, and that common law was not actually relied on by the Constitution, which brought the United States of America into existence, but rather profoundly rejected by that Document.  Furthermore, "common law" is not at all the same thing as Natural Law and, in fact, the two considerations are entirely separate from one another, even by definition!  While the States originally utilized some terms, principles and practices inherited from British common law, that common law was never a founding principle of this country, and the Constitution in no way relied on common law.

 
" The common law of England is not the common law of these states."
 George Mason, "Father of the Bill of Rights"
Debate in Virginia Ratifying Convention, 19 June 1788
"The common law is gone. The federal courts never applied the common law and even in the state courts it's codified now."
Justice Antonin Scalia, Federalist Society address, Nov 22, 2008

Perhaps the biggest irony of NLA's "Quo Warranto" asking "by what authority" those federal judges act, is questioning the very authority by which NLA itself demands those judges fill out their questionnaire, and demands they provide a "surety bond", or else provide their detailed financial statement, with the obvious presumption being that NLA itself will act entirely illegally to confiscate that bond, or those financial assets, when NLA deems they have not adhered to unspecified common law principles that do not exist, and are not a part of this country!

The Nevada "Superior Court Common Law Venue" indicates its own jurisdiction to to be "Original and Exclusive Jurisdiction", and prominently declares ahead of its findings that, "Its decision cannot be reviewed by any other court of the land."  Oh really? It is impossible that a grand jury formed in 2014, without any authority under law, to have any "original" jurisdiction at all, much less "exclusive" jurisdiction.  Furthermore, every single American should be disturbed by any group willing to declare itself entirely UN-contestable, above any law and court, and unable to even be questioned, much less challenged.

"COMMON LAW" VERSUS "NATURAL LAW"

There is a gross misunderstanding of what the "common law" is on the National Liberty Alliance site, and by "common law grand jury" proponents generally.  The Common Law is not something sacrosanct in this country, and is NOT at all synonymous with our own understanding of Natural Law unalienable rights. 

British common law is nothing more than the cumulative decisions, practices and general principles of the British courts that were never codified into law.  That's it!

In fact that British common law is founded on Feudal philosophy of noblesse oblige wherein a person is born into a position in society with obligation to those above them. British common law actually also uses the term "Natural Law", in representing this "natural" feudal obligation to those above oneself in society, as discussed at length in Lord Coke's decision in Calvin's Case, 1608.  It is "natural" for persons to be subservient to those above them.   These feudal common law principles result in the doctrine of "Perpetual Allegiance," an indelible obligation to  Crown, country and one's superiors that can never be broken, never severed by one's own choice, unless by death itself.   As Americans, we specifically rejected that feudal common law doctrine of Perpetual Allegiance in the War of 1812.

These  common law foundations are entirely antithetical to our own Natural Law understanding of rights being innate to the individual, unalienable, and coming from "Nature's God", certainly not allowed us by others in a caste society. 

Under British common law, the law of the Creator is conflated with the law of England and being lain down via edict to the common man from that divine Crown through the judiciary. The King is viewed as both head of the Anglican church and state as well.   By this,  under common law,  anyone in disagreement with the state is viewed as a hostile, with Jews being recognized as enemies with no real standing in Court, and having little assurance as to property rights. 

Natural Law is recognized, by definition, as being entirely outside of man-made Positive Law.  That man-made Positive Law consists of "statute", those laws that are codified and written down, and those things that are not codified as any singular law but still recognized as directing principle, "case law", with this generally including what is referenced as "common law." However "common law" is not necessarily recognized as being binding.  Common Law is a part of that man-made Positive Law, and entirely outside of Natural Law.

Natural Law and Common Law really have nothing to do with one another.

Given these facts, the claim that "common law" grand juries have some overriding authority, and are founded in American principles protecting individual rights, is a stunning ignorance demonstrating a failed understanding of both this country, as well as the issues these groups claim authority regarding.

IMPLICATIONS OF "COMMON LAW" GRAND JURIES BEING VALID

If such a thing were ever recognized, it would eventually result in citizen's grand juries being formed at a whim, and "stacked" with people intending to reach a pre-ordained conclusion, resulting in presentments or indictments for things that really are not all that legitimate.   Someone might even be criminally charged for eating a pastry into the shape of a gun. 

Then there's always the old cliche, "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."

Imagine the pure Hell that would be unleashed if the angry mobs in Ferguson could legitimately form their own "common law Grand Jury", and then pronounce a true bill presentment charging Officer Wilson with First Degree Murder, overruling the previous Grand Jury, and  the Missouri State Attorney would then be obligated to follow up on that charge, by arresting and trying Wilson for his very life. This could still happen despite a Grand Jury having already resolved that there was no evidence to charge Wilson.

Why wouldn't a grand jury formed by and from the angry mobs of Ferguson be valid? There is no special process involved in forming or validating those "common law" grand juries, and certainly everything inviting them to be "stacked" with people of whatever belief. That "angry Ferguson mob" could form their own "common law" grand jury, every bit as legitimate as any other common law grand jury.

Seriously, pause and consider if this were true,  any group of people could go off and form their own legitimate "common law" grand jury, and suddenly you yourself might have to answer to that jury's charges in an official court of law.

Or WORSE!  If they can do their own charges (presentments), why not their own convictions too?  We might have to answer to some unknown body of people, formed under unknown terms, acting entirely outside of the legal system, perhaps not even convening inside a courthouse, perhaps with a serious grudge against us for whatever reason, and they would be able to actually put us on trial for  something, anything, perhaps having us fight in their fabricated court for our very lives!

 If such things were allowed, none of us, not-a-one, would ever be safe from wild charges coming out of nowhere, or trials for our very life, liberty, and property in "no holds barred" makeshift courts in the middle of nowhere. No one would ever be truly safe.

This is not how we fix things. It is how the justice system and society itself would become forever broken, subject to mob rule, and America lost in absolute Anarchy, never to be a Republic again.

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Rajjpuut's Folly: Obama, the Divisive, Seeks Huge Permanent "Dependency Class"

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 6, 2010 at 1:21pm

Yes, it’s true, society has changed dramatically since the beginning of the end of the last half of the 20th Century. Fifty years ago, in 1960 when the Donna Reed Show and

Father Knows Best broadcast their visions of the ideal American family, 88% of all American children were raised living with both of their biological parents until they reached adulthood. While that statistic is hugely altered for all Americans, it’s become unrecognizable for Black Americans.

Today, like Obama himself, 80% of all Black children in America are conceived out of wedlock. The president has hidden his birth information fairly effectively so we can’t say for sure about him, but 70% of today’s Black children are born to unmarried women. Whatever happened to the Black family? More importantly, how does this occurrence impact today’s Black child? And how, does this disintegration of the once proud Black family impact today’s political climate, and what does it portend based upon Mr. Obama’s actions? Before answering the first and third question, let’s deal with the second.

In the aggregate, statistics tell a depressing story for all American families, once the bastion of our nation. However, the Black statistics tell a tale of utter ruination. If White society has trouble understanding the Black experience, it is more than anything else a result of the massive changes that have occurred since 1965 to the Black community. Today, less than half of all children – all races examined together -- are raised entirely by their birth parents and 33% of all children are born to unwed mothers. Another 33% of all those children born to married couples will find their parents divorced well before the child reaches adulthood, for Blacks these statistics are much worse.

Looking briefly at just the White children . . . the educational, economic and family stability advantages of being White drop totally away for White kids raised in a family without a father. The high school drop-out numbers for White kids are roughly 3.5 times higher if raised in a family without a father. Such children are between four and five times more likely to live in families with incomes below the poverty line and about three times more likely to divorce or never get married and raise their own children in one-parent families and thus perpetuate the cycle so intimately linked to poverty.

Not too surprisingly, the huge number of fatherless families in the Black community has a slightly less debilitating effect. This situation is the norm among Black families now and almost 90% of Black families exhibit one-parent status. The Black community as groups and individuals have institutionalized some fairly effective responses, often based upon multi-generational families which have tended to be matriarchal. However, that “norm” is certainly not beneficial for mother or children. Living without a father increases the school dropout likelihood for Black children to 175% compared to intact families (and, by the way, for Hispanic children to 196%) compared to 250% for Whites. The impact of living in a fatherless home, however, is definitely even bigger economically for all races.

As a whole for Blacks, as well as Whites and Hispanics, the single biggest social disadvantages seem to align with fatherless families. Since Black families are much more likely than White families to begin below the poverty line and 2.8 times more likely to begin with an unmarried woman at the helm – the economic challenges are much, much greater and the consequences for the Black children are generally negative.

The one-parent household, typically headed by a divorced- or never-married mother, has significantly fewer financial resources than intact families do. Poverty statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, show approximately half of households headed by single mothers in 1995 were below the poverty line, in contrast with the 10 percent figure for two-parent households. Yes, many of these families were poor before divorce, and a significant proportion were headed by mothers who never married. Nevertheless, the lack of a father's income has dire consequences for household finances. Even in well-off families, the fatherless home can suffer disproportionately. The newly established home headed in the vast majority of cases by the principal bread-winner holds typically far fewer members and receives the lion’s share of the divided resources . . . so the economic status of the mother often plummets dramatically.

The most obvious thing is that most children raised in a one-parent family, regardless of race, face a far greater chance of economic hardship. For Black mothers raising children without a father, this situation is much more common and much more devastating. How did the once-proud Black family get to this point?

Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs begun in 1965, hold some of the answers. The Civil Rights Bill, Kennedy had sought was signed by LBJ, an unmitigated boon to all of society and the Black community especially. But Johnson didn’t stop there. He launched his “War on Poverty.” The goals of the Great Society were twofold and entirely laudable on their face: elimination of poverty and elimination of social injustice. Truly the greatest of LBJ’s actual accomplishments was the Voting Rights Bill.
The hallmark of all the Great Society effort, from misguided liberal point of view was, however, “Affirmative Action launched by an LBJ speech** on June 4, 1965.” Its ghost haunts the Black citizen still today. Like most government spending and government interference boondoggles (GSBs and GIBs), however, much of the GS programming produced entirely the opposite effect at enormous expense. The cost of the Welfare State and the $74 Trillion in unfunded obligations arising from LBJ’s Medicare and the federal portion of his Medicaid today has been enormous and largely negative . . . and that’s just the dollar and cents cost.
In fairness to Johnson and liberal Democrats, the Johnson programs expanded greatly under Republican presidents Nixon and Ford before dramatically taking off under Carter, a Democrat. Under Carter the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA of 1977), the first mortgage-guarantee boondoggle (to be followed later by three more expansions in 1992, ’95 and ‘98) ultimately set us on the path that led to the sub-prime lending crisis and didn’t that turn out well? But mostly, they were “great notions – good intentions” that, like most government programs just weren’t thought out in accord with human nature. Humans need incentives not handouts.

And then there was . . . the juxtaposition of the War on Poverty and Affirmative Action with the undeniable fact that in 1964, after sixteen years the disaffected mostly-southern Democrats known as the Dixiecrats finally found a new home and voted as a bloc for the Republican presidential candidate. Barry Goldwater, who authored “The Conscience of a Conservative,” attracted the Dixiecrats and that was not lost upon the nation’s Blacks. The G.O.P., the party of Lincoln, now in the eyes of Blacks had become the party of Strom Thurmond. In 1968, 72% of Black voters went Democratic . . . in 2008, 95. 8% of Black votes went for Barack Obama. The Dixiecrats found their home and the Black’s found a new political home. The unfortunate result of that fissure was that the Democratic party has become greatly tied up with the notion of advancing Black well-being. Their electoral survival has depended upon it and the Democrats are seeking to add Hispanics as 90% loyal Democrats as well.

The “government dependency” syndrome for the Black community that’s grown out of that situation has had a horrendous effect upon Blacks. It is no exaggeration to say that the Black community is far worse off today than it was before the Democrats started helping them. Black Republicans like Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, Thomas Sowell, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Claude Allen are without exception such an anomaly in the Black community that all of them have encountered Black backlash for their “betrayal” and “Uncle Tomness.” Democratic Black leaders, for example, excoriated Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings. Black people who succeeded without relying upon Democratic largesse are uniformly held is disdain, a sad state of affairs that says more about Black problems today than just about anything else you might think of. The most successful of Blacks outside of the athletic field and show biz are disdained by the Black populace as a whole.

All of this is bad enough, but now we are dealing with a president who, though he promised to unite us, is clearly the most divisive influence in race relations since the Ku Klux Klan. The American Dream is disappearing from our shores with each utterance of Barack, the Divisive, now committed to a policy of creating race war for political benefit. On the one hand, for the first time in history it appears one generation of America will not leave their children better off than they themselves were – the point at which all political discussion should begin.

Barack Obama has decided that the battle will NOT be fought upon that ground, however, but on one of his choosing. Deplorably, the mainstream media has abetted him in this ugly switch of emphasis. Deplorably, too large a percentage of Americans don’t choose to understand the issues, but only to listen to the mainstream media rhetoric seldom sung with evidential accompaniment. He is playing to the weakest part of our natures. Only those locked into self-doubt so deep as to believe they cannot make it without huge amounts of help from the government favor socialisms and dependency, but many do and the media perpetuates that self-limiting stereotype at every opportunity. Instead of really helping poor people by teaching them the skills and attitudes needed to transform themselves, Blacks are almost always portrayed as helpless victims of the system, the only Black success stories routinely shown lie in two fields of endeavor: show business and sports.

Obama, unable to win on the factual basis of his promised job-creation ability has played the “race” card like a master of cacophony. His latest target is one of the most cynical and hateful ploys ever played upon the American public. His sneaking attempt to make Puerto Rico^^ a state; his lying attacks upon the Arizona immigration law, while doing nothing federally to attack the problems that spawned that law; and his hoped for coup de gras Amnesty and overnight citizenship for 14 million illegal aliens is all designed to make the “dependency class” permanent and much, much bigger; and permanently enshrine a whole host of Democratic-favoring welfare-dependents into the voting rolls. Never mind the devastation to the country as a whole. “Hispanicos, que siempre vivan fuertes e independientes y nunca como esclavos del dictador Obama, jamas!” (“Hispanics, may you stand strong and independent and never become slaves to Obama’s oppression!”).

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** LBJ paid brief lip service to the fact that Black (he called them “the NE-gro”) economic status had risen dramatically since the end of World War II, but all the other statistics he cited in the speech were about differences between Black and White earning power and how government must intervene in the interest of fairness. Mandated social justice has never worked. Like the American Revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s marches and sit-ins and Gandhi’s non-violent opposition that eventually gained India her freedom, social justice is largely earned or it does not occur. Just imagine . . . what kind of shift would occur in Black consciousness if Clarence Thomas was suddenly considered a prime role model for black youth rather than Rangel, Jesse Jackson, and Sharpe. Unfortunately, the easy way doesn’t work well or frequently, but it’s always more popular than the way of character. Black Americans hearing MLK’s inspiring “I Have a Dream” speech must truly take to heart the sentence about “the content of their characters?” That is the sentence that defines the American Dream.

^^ Obama knows little about the proud people of Puerto Rico. The “51st State” issue is not a hot-button Puerto Rican issue. Puerto Rican people, when they consider “la situation Puertoriquen~a” think independently. This issue comes up routinely for vote about once every decade and is a frequent visitor at kitchen table discussions. Roughly 34% of the islanders called “Independistas” think Puerto Rico needs to become an independent nation. Roughly 32% (the “Estadistas”) hope for big advantages if they were to become an official part of the United States. Meanwhile 33-34% of the populace like things just the way they are. They like the upside of being U.S. citizens without a lot of the downside, they represent the “Estatus Quo” and they always win whenever “la situation” is voted upon. The size of the voting base for each group changes only slightly over time. Two thirds of Puerto Ricans are NOT interested in statehood, period. No act of congress can change that. All said, the racism of Obama is clear and evident and unbelievably, the mainstream media can't see it.

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