Doug Bruce's Trespassing Trial Creatively Delayed

by: Colorado Pols

Sun Nov 15, 2009 at 13:27:51 PM MST

A Colorado Springs municipal judge Friday postponed a trespassing trial for Douglas Bruce and a fellow anti-tax activist after prosecutors argued the jury pool had been tainted by a man handing out leaflets in front of the courthouse.

The leaflets, according to Colorado Springs spokesman John B. Leavitt, told potential jurors "that they could render their decision based upon their conscience, rather than the judge's direction."

As a result, Judge Spencer Gresham dismissed the potential jurors who had been summoned to court. The trial will resume with a new jury pool on Dec. 4.

Gresham also ordered that no one will be allowed to post signs or hand out leaflets within 100 yards of the courthouse when the trial resumes. Leavitt said the jury commissioner was ordered to collect the fliers that were distributed.

Bruce said he did not know what the fliers said and was not involved in handing them out. He added: "I don't think it mentioned my name or trespass .... Apparently they want a jury that nobody has said anything to except the judge."

Bruce had asked for a six-person jury to decide whether he and Douglas Stinehagen broke the law on Aug. 15 when they refused to leave the grounds of a Costco store.

The two men contend they were exercising their First Amendment rights to gather signatures on petitions for what became Ballot Issue 300...

"Jury nullification" is one of those fun topics, like the right supposedly guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment to make your own license plates (or whatever it is), that's popular among weirdo leaflet types. To have them come out of the woodwork on Doug Bruce's court date for trespassing, though, rightly makes people wonder. The law is malleable...except for what Bruce wrote?