Mutiny!

Via Politics, Guns & Beer, we find a jury in Montana living up to their 1000-year-old responsibility to judge not only the facts of the case, but the law itself.

Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt.

They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.

No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.

In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

It's about damn time.

Let's just leave our respective opinions concerning marijuana out of this.  The fact is, regardless of over a century of government lies saying otherwise, juries exist to judge, in part, the law itself.

Were it just a matter of judging the 'facts of the case,' any judge could do that all by himself.  Facts don't change according to how many people observe them.  The reason for a jury trial is to ascertain the community's opinion not upon the facts, or upon the letter of the law, but upon the spirit of the law.  And that's just what this community did.

Nothing like starting a gloomy winter day off with some heartening news.  Go, Montana!