In a Missoula, Montana case, a jury was being selected for a trial in a marijuana charge. To be selected as a juror, that person must show that they are unbiased (one way or the other) in order to sit on the panel.
This is the “fair and impartial” jury that is a right of every defendant.
Well, in this Montana case, an unbiased panel could not be selected because the potential jurors felt that the local marijuana laws were unfair.
In my last drug case that I took to trial, I found one juror that felt she could not be fair and partial because she felt that marijuana should be legalized. She was stricken from the panel by the State’s attorney, and a new person took her place.
Unfortunately for the defendant, she was the only one in the room that expressed her feelings that way, so we were not able to reach a plea bargain as the defendant in the Montana case did.
The Montana case is a nice example of how “the people” can keep an unfair law from convicting a citizen. If a law is truly felt to be unfair, we have one last protection from the government – a jury of our peers.
This case reminds me the following quote:
“The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.”
— Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It)