Advising jurors about their legal rights is “not protected by 1st Amendment”?

We read:

"Advocating for a controversial legal tactic known as jury nullification can get U.S. citizens prosecuted for jury tampering, according to one Manhattan prosecutor who’s pursuing that very charge against a 79-year-old former chemistry professor.

Indicted last year, all Julian P. Heicklen says he was doing is handing out pamphlets from the Fully Informed Jury Association near a courthouse. ...

Manhattan prosecutor Rebecca Mermelstein argued in a recent court filing examined by the paper that because he hoped to 'target prospective jurors,' he was 'tampering with the legal process.'"

Source

Most jurors don't know that if they don't like the law under which someone is prosecuted they are perfectly entitled to find the person not guilty regardless of the evidence. It's a right that goes back hundreds of years.

When there are so many laws that everybody is guilty of something, it's an important safeguard against unfair prosecution -- so the legal system does its best to prevent knowledge of that right getting out. But Heicklen hands out pamphlets outside courthouses that tell people of that right.

He is a dedicated enemy of big government who puts his money where his mouth is: A genuine American hero. He is clearly protected by both provisions of the first amendment: Free speech and freedom of the press.

"Interfering" with a jury means corrupting them -- not telling them of their legal rights. Every judge would be interfering with a jury if that were so.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).