APO:Gentlemen of the Jury...  by Godfrey Lehman

   Religious liberty was at stake! The judges were furious and William
Penn faced life imprisonment! Hungry, thirsty, dirty, the Gentlemen of
the Jury decided to sit until death!

   A corps of turnkeys spread over the streets of London on orders of
the King, sending luckier citizens scurrying from sight, and taking
into custody the unfortunates who were too surprised to move.

   Clerks were pulled from their stools, carriages were stopped and
passengers forcibly requisitioned. Sixty or seventy Englishmnen were
collared in swift order and brought to the Central Criminal Court of
London for examination.

   They had committed no crime. The King's men were "selecting" them
for an unwelcome task  jury duty. Despite the Magna Charta's 450year
old guarantee to trial "by one's equals, " English juries were expected
to behave like judicial puppets parroting the Courts' dictated
verdicts, but juries were given no food or water, or access to the most
elementary form of plumbing, until the expected verdicts were
delivered. In a few cases where juries did defy the courts, defendants
might be freed, but the juries were themselves heavily fined and
imprisoned.

   Understandably, few jurors had the stamina to stick by the Magna
Charta. The date of the juror roundup was Wednesday, August 31, 1670.
By day's end all but 12 luckless Londoners had been released. Those
remaining, however, were to find themselves unwilling participants in a
trial that would set a legal precedent and shake the throne itself.

   QUAKERS ON TRIAL

   On Sept. 3, the trial of a 25year old Quaker, William Penn, and an
older colleague, William Mead, began in the Central Criminal Court.
Penn and Mead had been arrested and confined in the dreaded Newgate
Prison on August 14, when a group of three or four hundred Quakers
assembled for worship at the Gracechurch Street meeting house. There
they confronted a phalanx of Redcoats, each of them nervously gripping
a cocked carbine.

   Stepping forward, the troops' lieutenant pleaded with Penn that the
group not hold religious services that Sunday morning because their
Quaker worship violated the law. He read them the pertinent provisions
of the elaborate Conventicle Act which established one legal church,
the Church of Enghland. Penn responded that there was a higher law, a
law that permitted every man and woman to worship God or not worship
according to the dictates of his own conscience.

   Denied entrance to the meeting house, Penn began service in the
street. He and Mead were arrested and indicted for "leading a
conventicle, conducting an unlawful and tumultuous assembly...to the
disturbance of the peace, " and "conspiring and abetting together to do
the same. The King, the Parliament, and the Central Criminal Court
united for a trial designed both to silence Penn forever and to put an
end to the despised Quakers and other dissidents who defied the
established Church.

   Although the Court assembled on Thursday, Sept. 1, and the
indictments were read and the pleas of "not guilty" recorded, the trial
itself did not begin until Saturday, Sept. 3. The 12 jurors had been
confined to the Sessions House, also known as Old Baily, for two days.

   A parade of carefully coached military witnesses testified to the
guilt of both prisoners. Neither Penn nor Mead was given opportunity
for crossexamination or allowed to present witnesses or arguments in
their own defense. They did not deny the "holding of a Conventicle, "
but they asserted their right to religious freedom under the Magna
Charta. They had assembled peaceably, the only disturbance being caused
by the soldiers.

   GUILTY?

   By late afternoon if had become "clear and manifest" that they had
violated the law. All that was left was for the jury to go through the
motions of returning a guilty verdict, as the court directed. The
defendants would be convicted, perhaps never to be released from prison.

   From 7 a.m. until late afternoon the 12 jurors had been sitting on
rough benches. Now they were told that as soon as they had convicted
the prisoners they would be permitted relief and treated to a sumptuous
Courthosted banquet.

   Following precedents, the court granted the jurors one quarter of an
hour to agree to the guilt of both prisoners. The quarter hour passed,
and the jurors did not return. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. An hour.
No jurors. Finally, after an hour and a half, eight jurors returned and
the court ordered the bailiffs to draw forth the other four.

   NO VERDICT!

   "We have no verdict, " the jurors told the Court.

   The judges raged. Such defiance of the authoritarian powers of the
King, Parliament and venal Court! Still, there would be no conviction
without the jury acceding.

   Back the jury went for another half hour, and then they returned to
the Sessions House. The clerk asked the jury for the verdict and the
foreman arose. Penn: "Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street." Mead:
"Not guilty of the indictment."

   The court was incredulous. There was no law against "speaking." The
verdict meant nothing. "Is that all?" asked the recorder. "That is all
I have in my commission, " responded the stoical foreman.

   "You have as good as said nothing, " a judge roared at themn. The
presiding "Justice, " the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Samuel Starling,
pounded his desk, and demanded to know why the jurors would not obey
the directive of the Court.

   WE WILL NEVER YIELD OUR RIGHTS

   One Edward Bushell rose to respond. "The Court has no power in Magna
Charta to dictate the jury's verdict."

   "This Court has any power it chooses!" the Mayor shouted back. "To
disobey is to bring disgrace upon the Court as well as upon yourselves."

   "We do follow our consciences, which is to bring honor to this
Court, and we can do no other. If this be not honor, then we charge
this Court has no honor."

   "Your insolence is beyond endurance. It is the direct order of this
Court that you bring in 'guilty' against both prisoners."

   "No my Lord, " said Bushell, unyieldingly. "This the jury will never
do, for we will not betray the liberties of this country. We know our
rights in Magna Charta."

   The Court: "These rights will starve you."

   Bushell: "So it be, my Lord, but on this point we will not
equivocate. We will never yield our rights as Englishmen."

   Old Bailey went wild. The 500 spectators cheered for minutes. Never
had a Court of Law been so successfully put down. Never had the entire
government been so effectively overpowered by a handful of
conscientious common people "bumble heads" as the Mayor described them.

   Frustrated, the Justices refused to accept the verdict. They
commanded the bailiffs to lock up the hungry jurors overnight, still
without food, water or even a chamber pot. As a concession, the Mayor
agreed to convene the Court on Sunday, "in the interests of the health
of the jurors."

   The 12 spent a fitful night on the floor of the badly equipped jury
room, receiving limited rations from the sympathetic public, who sent
up packages through the windows until driven away by the soldiers.

   Bedraggled, aching, filthridden, the jurors returned to the
Sessions House Sunday morning. Back and forth between jury and
courtroom the 12 were shuttled, but their verdict remained: For Penn,
"Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street." For Mead: "Not guilty of
the indictment."

   NOT GUILTY!!

   The Jurors knew there was a higher law; that they should obey God,
not man.

   Nor would the Court give in. By midafternoon the disgusted Justices
locked up the jurors, again for the night. The jurors survived on the
meager emotional succor of the citizens shouting their encouragement
from a distance.

   When the Court assembled on Monday morning, the jurors were soaked
with urine and feces. The Mayor asked for the verdict, and the foreman,
barely able to stand, delivered a new and unexpected response. "Not
guilty, " to the question of each prisoner.

   The shocked Court forced each juror to stand in turn and "take
responsibility" for this more decisive verdict. Twenty four times the
words rang out

   NOT GUILTY

   Led by Edward Bushell, the jury had acquitted because "every man has
a right to worship God according to his own conscience." The 12
determined to sit until death on that principle. Yield at this point,
Bushell had impressed upon his colleagues, and their families and all
England would be enslaved. No one but the jurors stood between
religious liberty and thought control.

   On Sept. 5, 1670, the Justices capitulated. The Magna Charta and 12
stout men had struick a decisive blow for freedom. The Conventicle Act
fell. Penn and Mead were freed, never to be brought to trial again.

   MY LIBERTY IS NOT FOR SALE

   Nevertheless the Court was going to have its revenge. For "going
against the clear and manifest efvidence, " the jurors were fined 40
marks equivalent to perhaps a half year's earnings. Eight paid, but
four, again led by the stalwart Bushell, refused. Although Edward
Bushell was a man of great wealth and commanded an international
shipping enterprise, and although paymnent of 40 marks, or even 480
marks for the entire jury, was a pittance for him, and a far smaller
loss for him than continued absence from his business, he would not pay.

   "My liberty is not for sale, " he said.

   To pay would emasculate the victory. It would be a form of
apologizing for acting in good conscience. Thus, he and three others:
John Bailey, Charles Milson and John Hammond were imprisoned in the
same "hell above ground" from which their courageous action had freed
Penn and Mead.

   In Newgate they were subjected to degrading brutality from sadistic
jailers. They appealed through the distinguished Sir Richard Newdigate,
a retired Chief Justice under Cromwell and a lifelong champion of the
people's liberties. Sir Richard came out of retirement to argue the
case before the Court of Common Pleas, a Civil Court which actually did
not have jurisdiction to hear a criminal appeal. The Court of King's
Bench handles criminal appeals for the Crown, but Newdigate cleverly
managed to convince the not reluctant Chief Justice of Common Pleas,
Sir John Vaughan, to accept the appeal.

   ACQUITTAL BY JURY ABSOLUTE

   It took nine painful weeks for the legal maneuvering, the hearing,
and finally the Court to write its lengthy opinion, the jurors all the
while suffering the rigors of Newgate.

   Sir John had been more or less predisposed to his decision, but it
was necessary to cite many cases to build a foundation for a precedent.
On Nov.9 he took "the clearest position I have ever taken: both for law
and for reason. The power of the jury to determine its verdict, free
and untrammeled, is supreme. No Court can dictate a verdict. The
evidence could not be 'clear and manifest' for it did not appear so to
the jury. Acquittal by jury is absolute."

   Bushell was released on habeas corpus the first such writ issued by
the Court of Common Pleas. And since the Quakers' congregation had been
meeting in an orderly fashion, the jury also established the right of
peaceful assembly and freedom of speech. And, by its courageous stand
it demonstrated that one of the strongest powers in government is in
the jury room.

   copied from ALERT
