Our Grand Juries Have Been Taken Away

SO LET’S TAKE THEM BACK!

by Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III

(Jan. 22, 2011) — We need to restore the power of the people.

The big issue that we’ve discovered is a document of record over the course of a year’s investigation which wasn’t meant to be an investigation; it’s a year’s worth of exercising government.  Actually, it’s more than that; it’s two years.

What’s been discovered is that our juries have been taken over here in Monroe County, TN and throughout the Tenth Judicial District, which includes Polk, McMinn, Bradley, and Monroe Counties.  In this, we have an insight as to how our government has been taken away from us and replaced by a competing government which is rival to our United States Constitution; the government that is constructed in the U.S. Constitution, to be sure, and in state constitutions.

We can now prove it and recognize and understand what this means.  With this information, people can now go into their own communities and exercise government in their own local areas, their own communities and neighborhoods, to find out how things are working where they live.  We already have this going on, and we found the same problem wherever we go.

The juries have been taken over and a rival government has been installed; that’s the textbook definition.  As these replacement, hand-picked juries are being used against people, prosecutors, judges and court clerks are able to come up with what we are describing as premeditated convictions, which is the state’s ability to punish citizens directly without the inspection, permission, and oversight of a legitimately-constructed, constitutionally-recognized and operated jury, at either the grand jury level or the trial jury level.

That’s a profound finding.  You’ve seen the documents.  These documents are now in the hands of other people and are being recognized on their face as significantly and profoundly important as they really are.  So during my Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) assignment, having these documents in my possession and regarding them as we discussed, I was concerned that they would be taken away, and it gave me time to think.

Before going on the TAD assignment, we had been running into circumstances where we found a lot of ways to argue with one another as constitutionalists, and we’ve been struggling to find out what it is that we can do to actually take action and to fight back.  Over the course of this year, we’ve all come to the recognition and awareness of what a grand jury is, what it stands for, and what’s been taken away from us.  The notion today is that because we can take our grand juries back, we do have the way now, as a group of “We the People,” to exercise the power that the Constitution vested in us.  When people ask the question, “What can we do?” we can now answer them in a way that we haven’t been able to answer them before, even two weeks ago. They can go in now and ask questions of their own government about how their own grand juries are working, and that’s very, very important.

This is not a supposition; it’s not some political scheme.  We have real, tangible, unassailable proof that the jury system has been taken over here in the Tenth Judicial District in Monroe County, TN, and widely throughout the state of Tennessee. It’s been taken over.  Tennessee is probably the most corrupt state in the United States, and now we can see this in real terms.  Monroe County becomes a model for what may be going on and probably is going on in every other locality in the United States.

Once the jury system is taken away from us, the government can do whatever it wants.  The jury system is one of the protections given to us in the Constitution that protects us from a tyrannical, dictatorial, oppressive government.  It’s the grand jury that can come in and stop these people from doing what they’re doing.

Back in the mid-40s, people talked about the power being taken away from the federal grand juries by some clever chicanery with judges, prosecutors and court clerks saying, “Well, you know, we’ll put these rules together and we’ll strip the grand juries of the power of the presentment,” which is the ability of a grand jury to act on its own, independently, under its own authority, without being told, directed or controlled by a prosecutor, to put together a case on their own and find government corruption.  That’s what it was about.

What needs to happen now, as I see it, is that the power of the presentment is still found in the Constitution, and the rules that have been put in place – the Rules of Criminal Procedure in local, state or federal courts – do not transcend the law.  Prosecutors have been telling the federal grand juries for almost 70 years, “Our rules take over what was written in the Constitution,” and that’s not right.  That’s wrong.

Any grand jury in this country can stand up and say, “No, we still recognize the Constitution.  We still have and will exercise the power of presentment” wherein a formal accusation comes down from a grand jury and the grand jury orders the prosecutor to prosecute at its own discretion.

I’ve been thinking that we have to find a way to agree.  We have to find at least one thing that we can all agree on.  We have to stop fighting.  I think we can all agree on the Constitution.  Backing up even farther than that, I recognize that we are in the lower levels of a conflict which is, in fact, a civil war between combatants. Simply stated,  the fighting forces are divided in two:  that group which still stands behind and recognizes and obeys the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land, and the people who are trying to destroy the Constitution.  So for the forces on the side of the Constitution, it makes sense that we can all agree at least on the concept, and we have to save the Constitution as our form of government.

When you look to the Constitution and the protection that is found there, it was the jury that the Founders gave to us as but one protection that we could exercise against the overreach of government.  It was the government that took the juries away from us, and that’s how we’ve reached this point, at least in my observation.  There are those who can disagree, but I believe the case is very clear.  You can see it here in Monroe County; they’ve taken the juries away from us. In doing that, they have invented and installed their own government.  That’s the definition of treason.

This whole process began with bringing the charge of treason against Mr. Obama back in the spring of 2009, and it led us through this journey where we discovered that in our own communities, the jury system has been taken over, which is exactly how treason is described.  It’s the takeover of government and the installation of a rival, competing government, and it has given the judges and judiciary a power that the Constitution never intended for them to command.

What people are now aware of, and of which Tim Harrington, Tim Fasano, and others are finding one example after the next after the next, is that the judges are completely out of control.  We find people in the judiciary who have seen this going on  more closely who have been afraid to talk about it because they might be acted against but are now excited that “We the People” are now coming to the notion that this is what’s going on.  So as the word spreads, I think that we will find more examples, and more people will become excited and inspired about what it is they can do to in their own communities:  go in and find out how the jury system has been taken away from them, understand what that means, and then work to take it back.

The way I think we can do this, as a practical matter, is to go in and exercise the government in your local community; go into the courthouses and start asking questions about how the federal grand jury and the trial juries are put together, how the grand juries at the local level are assembled, gather up the information, and come back and report to the group that is now bringing us together:  the Patriots’ Union with Tim Harrington and J.B. Williams.  It’s that group of combatants who still see the Constitution as our fundamental law of the land as opposed to those who are trying to destroy the country by destroying the Constitution and installing a dictatorial, totalitarian, socialist takeover of government to try and subject everybody else.

Right now, the way forward is to go and exercise government, gather information, and then start talking to your neighbors about what it means that you’ve discovered.  In that, you’re going to bump into somebody who is on a jury someplace, be it a trial jury or a grand jury at the state, county, borough or parish level.  There are people in your community who are sitting on these juries, and they’re sitting on federal grand juries.  As this awareness starts to take hold, we only need one federal grand jury to stand up and say, “We’re taking back the power of presentments” and a federal prosecutor who would come in and say “Well, you know, you can’t do that,” but the grand jury foreman can say, “Excuse me, but oh, yes, we can, and here is where it says in the Constitution that it’s still there.  Your rules don’t transcend the Fifth Amendment.  Rules are not laws.”

This is a remaining step that can be taken peacefully to take back control of our government.  In the Constitution, you will find the power.  There are other places where the power resides, but you find one of the places in the construction, assembly and operation of a jury as the Constitution intended for a jury to operate either at the grand jury level or the trial jury level:  a randomly-selected group of your peers, people who come together and meet each other for the first time, and have nothing to do with you or the case.  They hear the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence based upon facts, evidence that is brought in to them, and testimony, and operate as 12 Angry Men.

But they’ve been taken over, and we see that here.  We have jurors in Monroe County who have been in the jury for 20 years.  We see recycled jurors.  We see that courts are actually picking the people who are going to sit on juries, and that has to resonate.  They’re profiling the juries here.

One of the questions that they’re failing to ask a jury member is “Are you a United States citizen?”  That’s an important question.  To be on a jury in Monroe County, you have to be a U.S. citizen first.  How is that U.S. citizenship determined?  How is it proven?  How does the county subject the citizens to a process which proves that you are a citizen of the United States of America?  In Georgia, I understand that they put people under oath; they’re under penalty criminal prosecution if they swear falsely.  But how would you find that out?  What if somebody is committing perjury?  How do they go in and actually determine whether or not someone is telling the truth?  That’s important to know.

Editor’s Note: Davidson County, TN affirms that a person must be a U.S. citizen to serve as a juror, as does Hamilton County.

In other places, where they don’t place people under oath, and if they do ask the question of citizenship, how do they determine it?  What process do they use?  What proof does one have to bring in?  What is the process  in the county of determining whether or not a juror is eligible to sit on the jury?  Then the question becomes, “If a person who’s the President of United States appeared in my community as a citizen, would he or she qualify to be a juror, and would he pass the test that my county has for the citizenship requirement?”

It’s not about citizenship in the White House anymore; it’s about citizenship in the community.  It’s about citizenship at home.  So are United States citizens populating our juries?  That’s a very important question.  And now people have the means to go out and ask because we’re not asking the question.  It’s not being asked in Monroe County.  And they are profiling the juries, as you have seen in these database documents that have been prepared.  So the watch word, the battle cry, is “Take back our juries.”

We can start at the federal level.  If the grand jury foreman at the federal level says, “You know, we can act on our own behalf; we can investigate government corruption on our own, without an attorney in here at all.  We can subpoena people and ask them to come in,” and this goes to every question that is out there as far as anything that you find wrong with government, a grand jury can look into it.  A state grand jury can look into it and a federal grand jury can look into it.  It depends on the circumstances, but this is what the grand jury used to do.

There have been men a whole lot smarter than me who have written about this and studied the history and made us aware of what the grand jury was and what it’s supposed to be.  But here we are, and it’s been taken away from us.  So when people say, “What can I do?” go to your courthouse and find out how your juries work.  Find out if there are U.S. citizens on the juries.  What you’re going to find is that they’ve been taken away from you.  Then ask your community to take them back.  Stand them up as the juries that they’re supposed to be, then have those juries work as they’re supposed to work.

As it goes to Lt. Col. Lakin‘s case, it was the first U.S. Congress of the United States of America that stripped servicemen and women of their constitutional protection of the jury.  That’s where the government started taking juries away from the people, and they did so unconstitutionally.  They said, “We’re not going to use juries in the United States Armed Forces.”  Oh, really?  How come that’s never come up as a debate?  Well, because every time it comes up for debate, the Congress says, “Well, that’s really too hard; we really don’t want to go there; it’s really kind-of a mess.”  But the bottom line is that the jury system does not exist in the United States Armed Forces.

So in taking back our juries and re-establishing the power of presentments with the grand jury, any federal grand jury in this country can look into the case that is swirling around Lt. Col. Lakin because he hasn’t been afforded the constitutional protection of a trial by jury as the Constitution of the United States recognizes a jury to be assembled and to operate.  Col. Lakin has not been afforded that protection.  That’s a huge consideration when you think about what it is that Col. Lakin is trying to do…to achieve by his actions, by way of disclosure…asking the question, “Are my orders lawful?”  That’s a question which every military man and woman should be able to ask, and now the military says, “No, not so much.”  It’s shredding the Constitution, and it’s being found in the military.

Again, as I see it, in this civil war, at the level of combat which now exists, I see that we have a peaceful way, if nothing else, to keep the level of conflict to its lowest level possible, to take back that power that’s been taken away from us, and we do it through our jury system.  We tear down, then re-establish, resurrect, reconstruct, rebuild the jury system in our own local communities. I think at some point, grand juries are going to understand what it is they can do and then ask.

At this point, I can’t think of anything else to do.  When somebody says, “What can we do?” I can now tell them.  If they act on it, fine; if they don’t…it may be too late.  There are some people thinking that this isn’t going to be any more helpful or useful than things that have been tried before, and it may not be.  I don’t know.  I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but we have this information here.  This is a question that can be raised up in every community; these questions resonate.  This question leads to the whole issue of U.S. citizenship.  It’s not about what’s going on in the White House, although that’s where this question leads, because if a juror in your community has to be a U.S. citizen, how do you determine that?  How does that U.S. citizen have to prove his or her citizenship, and if that’s the standard, would that standard serve to prove eligibility for the Commander-in-Chief?

If anybody were to be subjected to a county grand jury requirement, would the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces be able to sit on a jury in Orange County, CA or Orange County, FL?  That’s the whole question now, and it’s based on a different perspective.  It’s now a local concern.

For people who have been locked up as innocents, this is a profound revelation that’s been given to us here by the folks in the state of Tennessee.  They know they’re doing it, and they want to keep doing it because it’s very profitable, and for all the reasons that tyrants and dictators thrive upon:  power and money.  It’s our human history and experience.  The Constitution was meant to protect us against this very thing, and if we don’t get back to the Constitution at this point by re-establishing it – by taking back our juries – as history teaches us, this chain of events has a predictable outcome.

In 1963, the Michigan constitution was changed, and grand juries were left out.  Washington state has done away with the grand juries, as has Connecticut.  The judiciary was supposed to be the weakest branch of government, and it has stepped completely outside of the Constitution because they’ve not had oversight by the people.  That’s why they took the grand juries away, so that they could go on and operate in ways that they knew would be unlawful and illegal, and they can do it with a free hand because there’s nobody to stop them.

Once you tell people that, they understand it completely.  Where’s the oversight?  Well, from the grand jury.  Well, how does that work? and then you tell them.  Once folks understand it, they sop this up like a dry sponge does water.

Today, a citizen can’t approach a federal grand jury; you have to go through the U.S. attorney’s office.  That’s not how a grand jury is supposed to work.  And it’s because the federal prosecutors have blocked U.S. citizens from direct access to the grand jury that we have the problem we have today.  Wherever you look, it doesn’t have to be the issue swirling around the White House; it could be taxes, overreaching judges; it could be a local community ordinance issue; it could be corruption at the local level such as what we’ve seen in Monroe County.  You take these things to a grand jury and say, “I’ve seen these things going on in my community, and I want you to look into it.”  We don’t have that power because the judges, prosecutors and clerks have taken over the jury. In fact, here in Monroe County, they’re picking them by hand. What I’m describing is what I call premeditated convictions.

If they don’t take it to a jury trial, they’re threatening people, “Well, take a deal, because if it goes to the jury, we own the jury, and you’re going to get hammered.”  So what we have here is actual proof that, at the local level, they’re hand-picking the jurors with the precision and focus of a Lasik eye surgeon.  They’re picking them one by one, and in a state where the law requires that these juries be constructed at the grand jury level and at the trial jury level in a way that prohibits the possibility of any human agency.  When you look at these documents and you can see that in a state where you’re supposed to pick jurors as you pick lottery numbers, these folks leave nothing to chance.  That’s huge! They leave nothing to chance.

The folks who are involved here locally have been so for 20 or 25 years, and probably a lot longer than that.  So we start taking back our juries and see what happens.  It’s not going to be easy, but it’s something we can do.

Because this dates back to the 1940s, it was going on around our parents and our grandparents, and they didn’t know what was happening.  We come back to the issue of people now waking up and seeing what’s going on here and they’re ashamed because they feel it’s their fault, that they should have been more vigilant.  To that I’ve said, “Not quite.  Don’t be that hard on yourself.  What has happened is that you’ve trusted elected officials over and over again to be obedient to the Constitution and to do the right thing, and they’ve taken advantage of that trust and betrayed you in that trust.”

This is where we’re at now, and we’re discovering, in real terms and tangible ways, that our juries have been taken away.  And now we can tell people what that means and join forces to take them back.  This gives people something to do.  They should be motivated to do it, and if they’re not, as I said, history teaches us that there’s a predictable outcome to this kind of government oppression.

When you walk into your courthouse, the first reaction of government is “Oh, gee, that’s not what we’re doing here.”  They’re on the defensive right away.  That’s what you’re going to find, and you’re not going to like the answers to your questions.  You may not get any.  They’re just going to find ways to change the subject or not answer your question or turn their back on you completely.  This is something that’s going to burn through the country because there are people who have real interest involved.  This is a local issue now.

Any policeman can go into any household now and arrest you and lock you up, and you have no place to turn.  The government is not going to protect you.  We’re not going to find the solution in government; it’s the government that’s the problem.  It’s the jury system that was given to us in the U.S. Constitution to protect us from this kind of government takeover, this government oppression.  We have to get our juries back, and if we don’t do that…

This is the last peaceful, civilized action that can be taken.  As the numbers grow, we’ll have a better chance of taking hold and restoring the jury system as it was meant to be by the Founders’ documents.  Take back your juries.  Get them back.  Get them working right.  Send the prosecutors away.  Let people act on their own authority.  If a grand jury hands down a presentment and they take it to a prosecutor and say, “Go prosecute these people,” or they say to a sheriff, “Go arrest these people and bring them in” and these people don’t do what they’re told to do by a grand jury, then the grand jury can have them arrested.

If the grand jury is ignored, then does that not tell you how the jury is working in that community and what that says about law enforcement, what that says about the prosecutors and what’s going on in your particular part of the world?  And then they can report back to The Post & Email and say, “This is what we did, and our prosecutor refused to act.  Here’s what we’re going to do about it or didn’t do about it,” or in that event, they can take it to a federal level.  We’re going to find out just exactly how our government is working, and if the local officials are not responsive to the orders of a grand jury, then that’s going to be more evidence to show us that we really are living in a police state where the Constitution no longer works.  One way or the other, it’s going to show us something.  It’s going to be an evidence, a proof, a metric, a measure of where we stand in this country, and it will be an awareness that comes over people.  The community dynamic will determine how that plays out.

Folks are talking a lot about this issue as they begin to understand what was lost.   It’s not a hard concept to understand.  It’s been there in plain sight for a lot of us for a long time.  We trusted people to run the government as the Constitution required, and they betrayed us.  Now it’s time to regain our power.