“Tainted by exposure to an unlawful doctrine” is the entire cause of DA Coty Wamp, who without serving me notice demands that Judge Amanda Dunn bar me from the courts building for the duration of a court case because I advocate for jury nullification. The Ray Rzeplinski trial starts Monday in criminal court, division 2. Miss Wamp objects to my ideas about liberty and jury conscience duties. (Photo David Tulis)
Ray Rzeplinski is being shafted by “the system” and awaits a rescue from the people in form of the 12 petit jury members deciding facts and law starting Monday. Because he asserts his rights, DA Coty Wamp issues a superseding indictment years after an initial one, hoping to secure behind bars 1,270 years for public safety. (Photo David Tulis)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Saturday, July 27, 2024 — If a prosecutor is willing to violate the constitutional right to a free press and open courts to quash “the unlawful concept of jury nullification,” your job is to understand your great power to thwart “the good people” and await your turn as a juror.
Hamilton County, Tenn., district attorney Coty Wamp wants the public and jury members not to be “tainted by exposure to an unlawful doctrine.”
She doesn’t want them to understand a form of people power that is an inescapable part of God’s created order in which the citizens exercise a veto on bad law.
Jury nullification occurs when in a criminal trial the people reject a law and its application to the defendant. It could be a total repudiation of the law. The jury, in its secret deliberations, reject a law in its entirety and overthrow it. Reaching a not guilty verdict also could be saying something less, that the application in this instance of the law to these facts of a unique defendant case is improper.
The right of conscience of a jury member to vote not guilty despite all the facts is a vital check against tyranny and corruption.
The United States has fallen into the low status of dictatorship or Banana republic, with continuing revolutions by state actors against the state and federal constitution, against valid laws and also against institutions and individuals who stand on the wrong side of the power elite.
In Southeast Tennessee where I live, the abuse is thoroughgoing in many areas of the judicial department of the county and among police and deputies. The courts side implicitly with familiar abuses that no longer seem abusive to the Office holders in black robe. The abuses are so familiar that not even public defenders, such as Hamilton County’s Steve Smith, view them with alarm as problems that should be overthrown and set straight.
In jury nullification, the jury member votes no and refuses to let the state convict the man or woman prosecuted.
Coty Wamp is elected by conservatives who may understand constituitonal guarantees as little as she does. (Photo Coty Wamp)
The criminal case that has brought forth the great ire of district attorney Coty Wamp is State of Tennessee vs. Ray Rzeplinski, a prosperous plumber who invested savings in firearms and who is surprised to find that a youthful misdemeanor burglary involvement was actually a felony “crime of violence.” He is being tried on 57 counts of “felon in possession” with a 1,270 year prison sentence because he refused to buckle under DA pressure to cop a plea.
The case should not have been brought because the government itself cured his “felony” record by giving him many evidences of approval such as licenses, permits and permissions, all of which confirmed his longstanding belief that at best he is a misdemeanant.
Chattanoogans have heard for years about jury nullification, that it is a check on such abuses on cases of malice, error and policy over law. I have believed in the concept my whole life, and see it as increasingly necessary as government evolves into gangland-style management of the public square, with grift, violence, fraud and mass harms evident right here in my hometown.
The courts can’t rule against actual jury nullification. The best they can do is to constrain references to it in court by attorneys. Cases say lawyers may not implore nullification as a defense. And judges dare not attempt to abridge our rights, according to rules for the state supreme court.
The rules prescribed by the supreme court pursuant to § 16-3-402 shall not abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right, and shall be consistent with the constitutions of the United States and Tennessee.
16-3-403. Rules not to affect substantive rights — Consistency with constitutions
The jury veto authority belongs to every man and woman with a conscience and a moral framework and cannot be even pretendedly controlled or regulated by a court or judge.
If we believe that a prosecution is abusive or improper, no matter how strongly and well argued she makes the state’s case, we have a duty to throw the case out by voting not guilty.
A not guilty vote is not the same as voting for innocence. A jury that says “not guilty” is not saying the accused is innocent, just that he is not guilty.
Coty Wamp motion on Jury Nullification
Citizens in our country have 4 boxes by which to effect government and the course of state. Oratory box, ballot box, jury box and bullet box. The right to use cartridges and munitions is from Tenn. const. Art. 1 sect. 26, “That the citizens of this state have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense ***.”
Jury nullification rises from sects. 1 and 2 that place sovereignty among the people. This claim is a theological error, as sovereignty belongs only to God. But the point is still valid, that the people are the arbiters of whether they suffer under oppression or throw it of by abolition of the state itself.
Section 1. That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of those ends they have at all times, an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
Section 2. That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
Americans have reserved themselves the right to abolish their states and government if they harm more than they help. (Photo Wikimedia commons)
Jury power is recognized here, and also in the Christian scriptures. The people have the final say on application of a law in a court case, and the law itself.
Jury nullification, Coty Wamp avers, cannot be promoted by lawyers and courts. That doesn’t affect what we know, and what we do.
If you are called to the gladsome duty of juror, jump at the chance. Pay attention. If the law is abusive, or if you know that a guilty verdict will bring an unreasonably long punishment or high fine, vote no.
The Ray Rzeplinski case is a perfect vehicle to save an innocent man from a death sentence, and give Miss Wamp a little help in seeing how constitutional government is supposed to work.
Tulis filings on press liberties vs. DA Coty Wamp
