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The Conviction Factory, The Collapse of America's Criminal Courts, by Roger Roots
Page 40
Private Prosecutors
"For decades before and after the Revolution, the adjudication of criminals in America was governed primarily by the rule of private prosecution: (1) victims of serious crimes approached a community grand jury, (2) the grand jury investigated the matter and issued an indictment only if it concluded that a crime should be charged, and (3) the victim himself or his representative (generally an attorney but sometimes a state attorney general) prosecuted the defendant before a petit jury of twelve men. Criminal actions were only a step away from civil actions - the only material difference being that criminal claims ostensibly involved an interest of the public at large as well as the victim. Private prosecutors acted under authority of the people and in the name of the state - but for their own vindication. The very term "prosecutor" meant criminal plaintiff and implied a private person. A government prosecutor was referred to as an attorney general and was a rare phenomenon in criminal cases at the time of the nation's founding. When a private individual prosecuted an action in the name of the state, the attorney general was required to allow the prosecutor to use his name - even if the attorney general himself did not approve of the action.
Private prosecution meant that criminal cases were for the most part limited by the need of crime victims for vindication. Crime victims held the keys to a potential defendant's fate and often negotiated the settlement of criminal cases. After a case was initiated in the name of the people, however, private prosecutors were prohibited from withdrawing the action pursuant to private agreement with the defendant. Court intervention was occasionally required to compel injured crime victims to appear against offenders in court and "not to make bargains to allow [defendants] to escape conviction, if they...repair the injury."
The People's Panel
The Grand Jury in the United States, 1634 - 1941
Richard D. Younger
Page 3
"They proved their effectiveness during the Colonial and Revolutionary periods in helping the colonists resist imperial interference. They provided a similar source of strength against outside pressure in the territories of the western United States, in the subject South following the Civil War, and in Mormon Utah. They frequently proved the only effective weapon against organized crime, malfeasance in office, and corruption in high places.
But appreciation of the value of grand juries was always greater in times of crisis, and, during periods when threats to individual liberty were less obvious, legal reformers, efficiency experts, and a few who feared government by the people worked diligently to overthrow the institution. Proponents of the system, relying heavily on the democratic nature of the people's panel, on its role as a focal point for the expression of the public needs and the opportunity provided the individual citizen for direct participation in the enforcement of law, fought a losing battle. Opponents of the system leveled charges of inefficiency and tyranny against the panels of citizen investigators and pictured them as outmoded and expensive relics of the past. Charges of "star chamber" and "secret inquisition" helped discredit the institution in the eyes of the American people, and the crusade to abolish the grand jury, under the guise of bringing economy and efficiency to local government, succeeded in many states. "
Debate in Virginia Ratifying Convention
June 6, 1788
George Mason:
"Among the enumerated powers, Congress are to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, and to pay the debts, and to provide for the general welfare and common defence; and by that clause (so often called the sweeping clause) they are to make all laws necessary to execute those laws. Now, suppose oppressions should arise under this government, and any writer should dare to stand forth, and expose to the community at large the abuses of those powers; could not Congress, under the idea of providing for the general welfare, and under their own construction, say that this was destroying the general peace, encouraging sedition, and poisoning the minds of the people? And could they not, in order to provide against this, lay a dangerous restriction On the press? Might they not even bring the trial of this restriction within the ten miles square, when there is no prohibition against it? Might they not thus destroy the trial by jury?"
When Oath Keepers called Lavoy Finicum, to warn him, and to encourage him to move to a safe place immediately, those events offer a clear message. In one county the criminals who counterfeit the law powers will lie, cheat, steal, murder, and mass murder with impunity. In a nearby county that type of power is not absolute. Why?
What can be done in every county, in every state, in a reforming federation of independent states, in order to prepare for these warnings concerning an impending war between so-called Black Hats, and so-called White Hats?
Clearly what is needed is one county after another, is a reforming of independent Grand Juries, Trial Juries, and Prosecutors who will investigate, present, and offer the worst evil people daring to show up in that county, trial by the country according to the law of the land.
The people needed to accomplish this are the people who will not be fooled into aiding, abetting, and lending moral, and material support to these criminals who are well beyond alleged criminals, and as clear as spring water, these criminals are soaked in innocent blood, guns smoking, and they are on the public record confessing their guilt, or turning each other in, ratting each other out, to whom?