Top Six States for a Citizen Grand Jury

We Are Change

I’m not a constitutional scholar, I have no degree in law, but the following information I have put together paints a clear picture that the people of the states where feasible, can lawfully challenge corruption at the core of their government institutions to the highest level of the state courts.

Corruption in the courts has always existed. There is a deep history of Bar Association corruption, corrupt to their cores, involving bribery both local and international, that if left unchecked by the people is poised to deliver more long-term consequences.

The Bar Association is a self-regulating entity. It doesn’t swear an oath to the Constitution, it swears an oath to itself at the end of the day. They are controlled. They fear their entire career can be stripped away from them if they step out of step with the Bar.

A radio show run by Wes Winston of Florida argues that the entire Bar Association should be regulated like every other business. They self-regulate themselves, and this creates a climate for internal corruption the state has enforces no authority over. This is a violation of basic checks and balances in government.

So what is the solution? The Citizen Grand Jury!

Two types of citizen grand juries exist that I can follow. One is to be implemented only by citizens as a grand jury, and the other seems to be a citizen-initiated mock trial with little track record of its jurisdiction.

Citizen Grand Juries (CGJ) are a concept that has been around for some time. Commonly, they are formed independent of the state and are fully constitutional but get little resolve.

The first type of Citizen Grand Jury is one that has had a bad rap in the media. White supremacists call for citizen grand juries, but this doesn’t mean citizen grand juries are bad, it simply means that bad people have used them. Bad people can control the courts as well, so what difference does it make if a white supremacist or several of them have initiated citizens grand juries before? With proven racism in the state-controlled courts against black people, what argument is there about racism and how  it is related to this process of civil democratic checks and balances?

What lawful actions can be taken to seize more citizen power to challenge corruption in your government?

We can become engaged in direct petitioning of our government, with voters ballot petitions for the right to Citizens Grand Jury.

Six states have their rights enshrined in their constitutions, and they have given specific guidelines for anyone to claim their rights they seek. Exact processes and signature requirements for citizen groups to qualify their proposals are provided.  Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma are the only states that offer this process.

For example:

The process is governed by Article II, Section 14, of the New Mexico Constitution which states in part:

“A grand jury shall be convened upon order of a judge of a court empowered to try and determine cases of capital, felonious or infamous crimes at such times as to him shall be deemed necessary, or a grand jury shall be ordered to convene by such judge upon the filing of a petition there[of] signed by not less than the greater of two hundred registered voters or two percent of the registered voters of the county, or a grand jury may be convened in any additional manner as may be prescribed by law.”

Two percent of the voters in a county is a very small amount for any serious activism group. Most ballot proposals required 5 to 10 percent of the voter’s signatures. Citizen initiated grand juries should be a popular form of activism in the aforementioned states.

To protect ourselves against a tyrannical government, we must become engaged with our government. The citizen-initiated grand jury petition process, offer a non-partisan checks-and-balances process for the people to apply directly.

Citizen grand jury processes are about bringing democracy to the courts.  It enables true checks and balances that are to be non-partial to political ideologies. The court is to uphold and protect the constitution and the Citizen Grand Jury is to uphold that justice when the court could fail it’s rightful obligations due to agendas of their members.

States and cities with the ballot initiative process can implement this right by popular consent. All the people need is at least one scandal to organize a ballot drive to empower voters with further ballot access rights.

The ballot initiative to implement such rights such as has been attempted in Montana. This author has archived a copy of Citizen Grand Jury Model Legislation, that can be implemented in any state in the nation via ballot initiative.

These types of rights are among the only rights that give voters true power in government. Rather than wait for politicians, the people can be the change. It’s time we worked together on bringing justice in the non-violent, civil and lawful method, instead of waiting for criminals behind benches to police themselves.

The post Top Six States for a Citizen Grand Jury appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change http://wearechange.org/top-six-states-for-a-citizen-grand-jury/