Bring in the Jury to Bring Fairness to Family Court

By Marie White

A court without juries puts the judge in total control, without checks and balances, without a requirement to follow due process. That might be OK for traffic court, but not for matters of life, liberty or even property.

So why is it OK to remove the jury in Family Court, when the lives of children and parents and their property are at stake?

The value of the jury – of 12 peers in the community selected at random – none there for a living – none with a financial interest in the outcome – lies in its ability to grant the weaker party, the poorer parent, a veto on the absolute power of the judge, his favored court actors and the parent who pays them more.

The jury can give the weaker parent a voice against affluence oppression. Through trial by jury, the weaker party can nullify unjust and biased court actors.

The parties can appeal to the common-sense judgment of the people.

A jury ensures judges remain within the limits of the human social contract – that children and parents have equal rights to happiness and access to each other.

A jury will be more likely to uphold natural law and common-sense justice, for they are empowered to do so and cannot profit financially from violating natural law.

The jury can safeguard against infringement of rights and interests by paid court actors, limiting the scope of decisions that take custody away for profit, like children were jellybeans.

A jury might more likely render verdicts that benefit children and protect the parents.

A jury is less likely to heartlessly flip custody or buy into parental alienation syndrome as a reason for terminating parental rights. A jury will be more likely to listen to competing custody evaluators or consider various reports, without concern about how much money the therapist, lawyers or guardians ad litem stand to gain.

A custody evaluator, Candy Byron-Manica, paid by a father, dependent on referrals, is ready to find parental alienation. Her recommendation – flip custody to the father.

Even though the judge might have officiated at the wedding of one of the paid actors and wants to favor his good friend, the jury might not care.

A jury might not be sold on the testimony of the Attorney for the Children, even though her son sits on the State Senate Judiciary Committee, and the judge is up for reappointment next spring.

Judge Anjie Krooks-Grossjean

Or an attorney who threw fundraisers for the judge when he ran for election to his 14-year term.

A jury might not care that the attorney and the judge go back 30 years, go to the same church, worked at the same law firm, or are members of the AFCC.

Let Us Prey

Sure, juries aren’t perfect, and judges can manipulate a jury, but the funny thing about juries is not that funny to lawyers and other con artists in family court – one can never be sure of a verdict.

MK10Art – the jury.

A judge can no longer nod to his favorite, assuring him with a slight wink that the case will go as the lawyers plan – for judges know lawyers have to eat. They are all gourmands.

We have come to realize, like the Founding Fathers, that people are alike all over, and power without remorse is corruption.

Judges are people too.

The jury brings uncertainty into family court proceedings. The fix is not always already in. No lawyer can promise a verdict.

It gives the little guy or gal a shot against the biggies – the judges, the GALs, the therapists, the custody evaluator – who will testify in unison, for instance, whatever the wealthy father wants – as in, for instance, that Mom is crazy and alienating those poor kids.

 

Jurors are not paid professionals. They don’t make money from scam or conspiracy, and won’t likely see the court players again. They don’t have to answer to anyone. They can’t be punished for their verdict.

They might be mothers themselves or were born from a mother, and might remember how horrible it would have been to be yanked out of their home, as children are in Family Court today – on the mere word of paid actors – and told ‘you can’t speak to your mother [or father]. We’re moving you in with the parent you fear – the one who is abusing you.

You don’t have a home anymore, because parental alienation is worse than losing your primary attachment figure, as if that wasn’t abuse.

Guardian ad Litem, Josie Wolfwitz

Without a jury, children are tools of the court. And it is well-known family court model that if you hand custody to the abuser with money, the protective parent will fight maybe to the death to protect them, and this will make the abuser spend and spend.

We combine to protect the ‘best interest of the children.”

If anyone thinks lawyers are too ethical to play such a vile filthy game – or that judges will stop them – they probably suffer from some unspecified mental disorder, or unnatural stupidity or obscene naïveté.

A jury might not give a damn about therapists who make hundreds of thousands of dollars – smart know-it-all therapists who went to school to study Dr. Richard Gardner’s defense of pedophilia – therapists who say children need to be in their care for years to come.

A jury might not give a damn about their opinions and decide that the children don’t need a therapist. They need their mother or father or both.

No, you can’t count on juries to do the bidding of lawyers or therapists, not even the judge.

Family Court Judge Abel Gerardman

Some will say that convening a jury for every family court case will be too hard, too cumbersome. I see it differently. We convene juries for every petit larceny if it goes to trial. If John Doe sues John Smith for $20,000, he gets a jury.

Kids don’t deserve a jury? Or do you think judges are more trustworthy?

What is a judge? Lincoln said, a judge is a lawyer who knows the governor.

A jury trial means the honest poor will have a shot against the rich, for she can go straight up on the witness stand and talk to the jury in a mother’s voice of the times of their lives, the natal scene, the first day of school, the sacrifice of career, the time they took Jimmy to the hospital at 3 am or stayed up all night when she was scared; the thousand little sacrifices a parent makes that no custody evaluator ever born ever made, and the damn jury might ignore the damn psychologist’s credentials and hand custody to the mother.

The judge can be cool as a green dollar bill when he orders no contact between mother and child, but that same mother might strike a jury hot. The jury will reduce trials and conflicts.

Lawyers know they can’t be sure to deliver results to big-bucks parents. The jury, like the worm, might turn.

Put up both parents one at a time, each to testify, not before a judge but before 12 common folk who don’t have money or not too much, and wouldn’t dream of buying custody or selling children – even if it were their living.

Lots of rich parents who thought they could buy custody, even if it cost a million per child – which is the going rate in some jurisdictions – though you can often get a bargain of three kids for a million and a half, and lawyers who thought kids were theirs to sell – will have to think twice and settle if there is a jury.

There will be less high-conflict cases, not more. For most times, a good spirit and an honest counselor can bring diplomacy, peace to bear, and common sense, which is most often shared custody.

But it doesn’t pay well. A high-conflict custody case can equal billings in the millions. A peaceful settlement will be worth a few thousand.

You can’t make a living on that.

So, lawyers who stoke the flames of spousal war – who employ silver bullets or parental alienation syndrome with a diagnosis of a mental disorder unspecified from custody evaluators to destroy the other parent; lawyers for they know the judge and how to get her to appoint the right attorney for the children, who can recommend the right custody evaluator, and therapists and visitation supervisors – and down goes the mom and dad pays, but maybe less than child support.

The game is over with the great equalizer – the jury. For you never can tell what they might do when they retire and go in alone, without the judge, into the jury room to deliberate, all 12 and come out at a time unknown with a verdict.

Nine hundred years ago, and even before it – the jury was installed to end the power of kings, for no one thereafter could have their life or liberty taken without the unanimous consent of the 12. They call it trial per pais, a trial by the people, not a trial by government.

Family court is a trial by government. It needs to be a trial per pais.

Everyone knows the jury is the palladium of liberty. The jury brought us freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, ended witch trials, fugitive slave laws, prohibition, and much more.

Thomas Jefferson said, I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.

The jury could end the power of the kings of the family court, the lawless judge and his courtiers, who act without mercy for profit, without regard to the children.