Yes, it can be tough, but I think we're gaining some momentum. We have seen some high profile coverage of jury nullification, the issue, as well as jury nullification cases in the national media in recent years.

It's one thing to hand a juror a brochure as they walk into a courthouse and expect them to act on it if appropriate when they serve on a jury that week. That actually does have some success. I have a picture of jurors lined up outside the Hall of Justice in San Diego reading FIJA literature while they wait to get inside the very same week that a medical marijuana case had a hung jury or acquittal (I can't recall which off the top of my head) AND Jeff Olson was acquitted of thirteen charges of so-called 'vandalism' for chalking anti-Bank of America messages on a public sidewalk outside of a Bank of America in a town that has at least one city-sanctioned chalk are festival.

But our larger goal is to reintegrate knowledge of jurors' right to conscientiously acquit back into our culture. It used to be just general common knowledge that jurors could do this, somewhat along the lines of how we all know we could one day be called for jury duty in today's culture. That was actually part of the basis for a Supreme Court ruling that began chipping away at this cultural knowledge. In the 1895 case of Sparf v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that judges were not required to inform jurors about their right to conscientiously acquit because supposedly it was common knowledge. Since then more court cases have chipped away further so that we are now to the point where judges are allowed not only not to inform jurors, but if they outright MISINFORM jurors, even as far as telling them there is no such thing as jury nullification or instructing them that if they believe the law was broken beyond a reasonable doubt that they 'must' convict, this has been ruled to be factually incorrect but that it constitutes insufficiently egregious error as to warrant an appeal. With this kind of misinformation quickly becoming the standard in jury instructions, the only way most jurors will have any idea about their option to conscientiously acquit is if they learn about it before they get to the courthouse. And the most likely way they will feel confident about using it, contrary to a judge's instructions, is if they have had more than just a brief encounter, but rather are hearing about regularly in the public discourse.

In short, we teach jurors that:
-The purpose of the law is to uphold justice. Justice is not meant to be violated for the sake of upholding the law.
-When the law and justice are in conflict, jurors can and should set aside the law if necessary to deliver a just verdict.
-Jurors are not required to check their consciences at the courthouse door. They can and should consult their consciences in deliberating and deciding a just verdict.
-Jurors cannot be punished for their verdicts.
-Conscientious acquittal is a peaceful defense against government corruption and malicious prosecution. It is the people's pardon.

Thank you for the information on Massachusetts. I will check it out.

-Kirsten

Kirsten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association here.

Since the question came up, I thought I'd give you an idea of what we do to educate people about jurors' rights other than maintain a website:
-give public presentations on jurors' rights and responsibilities and speak at conferences (for example, we hosted a community session at and spoke on the first jury nullification panel at last year's Drug Policy Reform Conference)
-host information tables at community events across the country
-do sidewalk outreach near courthouses, delivering informational brochures to all who pass by, some of whom are jurors
-provide training to volunteers to be able to safely and effectively conduct courthouse and other outreach activities
-send anyone who requests one a free Jury Power Information Kit with a variety of FIJA literature (also available online, but we get a lot of calls to the toll-free number from retired folks who are not as plugged into the internet)
-provide printed materials, banners, posters, etc. for events such as Jury Rights Day on 5 September each year and other events around the country
-research, write, and publish educational materials on jury issues including brochures, essays, and soon ebooks
-research and document the history of jury nullification, including specific jury nullification cases and their effect on the course of history
-write guest editorials, issue press releases on timely issues, give interviews to the media, serve as fact checkers for the media, and provide prop kits for television shows and movies
-occasionally lend our name to amicus briefs when matters of the jury are at issue

Some of the upcoming projects we would like to be able to fund include:
-working with an independent hiphop artist to deliver our educational message in a more popular format
-develop special materials and programs in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, a key document in jury history, coming up in 2015
-long-term campaigns in Washington state, Boston, New York, New Jersey and other locations
-researching and publishing scholarship on various indicators of jury health in the 50 states and the federal courts (e.g. when you are guaranteed a jury trial, jury size, number of jurors required to convict, jury rules in death penalty cases, and so on)

That's not an exhaustive list, of course, but I think it does give you an idea that what we do is very proactive and does cost money. It's not a simple matter of passively maintaining a website. :-)

While we do not advocate for or against any case in progress (in part, to protect our volunteers from false accusations of jury tampering, which our educational activities are not), we do target our sidewalk outreach efforts to do general educational outreach in timely locations. Some of you may be interested in helping us get a sidewalk courthouse outreach effort going at the Southern District Court of New York, which may ring a bell with you. If this particular location piques your interest, please contact me! I am VERY interested in organizing in this particular location. This is quite possibly the safest courthouse in the country to do sidewalk outreach. A couple of years ago, an activist handing out FIJA literature won a court ruling against incorrect charges of jury tampering, thereby specifically affirming our First Amendment right to do our work in this very location. We have the ruling up on our website here:
http://fija.org/docs/Judge_Wood_opinion_Heicklen.pdf

We are, indeed, a 501c3 non-profit organization. We were founded in 1989, and I believe we got our non-profit status in 1992 or thereabouts. Our EIN is 81-0461842.

If there are any other questions I can answer about our organization, I would be happy to do so. Thank you for your consideration!

We're happy to do it, and we invite everyone interested in spreading the word about jury nullification to join us. We have Jury Rights Day coming up on September 5, commemorating the famous jury nullification in the trial of William Penn in 1670, which led not only to strong protection for jurors' rights but also for freedoms of speech and religion. Groups and individuals around the country host Jury Rights Day events. They are very easy to do, so if anyone is interested in volunteering to host one, please check our Jury Rights Day web page: http://www.FIJA.org/jury-rights-day

FIJA is strictly an educational outreach organization. We don't do legal advocacy for or against any case in progress, give legal advice, or provide legal defense funds. However, we do try to conduct outreach activities in places that are particularly timely. I am particularly interested in getting some outreach going in New York City right now. There have been some prominent local people talking about jury nullification there, as well as some recent cases where people have called for jury nullification. It seems like a timely moment in this location to get a long-term jury nullification campaign going there. We also have the bonus benefit of an Opinion and Order from Judge Kimba Wood of the United States District Court Southern District of New York explicitly protecting jury nullification outreach per the FIJA guidelines, so this is just about the safest place in the country to do courthouse jury nullification education: http://fija.org/docs/Judge_Wood_opinion_Heicklen.pdf

Kirsten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association here. We actually have a brochure available that I recommend to everyone before they go to jury duty for exactly that purpose. It is called "Surviving Voir Dire" and can be downloaded from our website here, sixth brochure linked: http://fija.org/document-library/brochures/