Only the Jury can Convict

            The principle that juries should 'vote their conscience' is the main thread in Live Free and Nullify by Carla Gericke. This is an important idea—for juries are part of the local community and can perceive the justice or injustice of draconian sentences and the severe impact they have on individuals who have neither injured anyone or been charged by another citizen of a crime. As the collected fines from more and more misdemeanours, many consisting of victimless crimes, become a source of income for City Hall's profit center—and when public records become permanent tags on individuals, a corrective to the abuse of power is needed. When Americans turn snitch on one another, when all the witnesses are government informants, when the State passes laws that infringe on individual liberties—there seems to be no other remedy except for conscientious jurors to vote their conscience.