In Virginia, the jurors are selected by the sheriffs; but the sheriff's are appointed by the governor of the state, and that is enough to make the juries illegal.
Lysander Spooner: “In Virginia, the jurors are selected by the sheriffs; but the sheriff's are appointed by the governor of the state, and…”
Editor's note · Context
Spooner points out that the appointment of jurors by sheriffs, who are politically appointed, undermines the legality of juries.
Share
More from Lysander Spooner
The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the…
And the right is practically established only when and because the government, no longer exists to call it in question.
And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.
In nearly or quite all the States of the United States the juries are illegal, for one or the other of the same reasons that make the juries in England illegal.