Denver Activist Arrested for Passing Out Pamphlets, Which Apparently Is a Felony in Colorado
5th August 2015
Last week Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey charged a local political activist, Mark Iannicelli, with seven counts of jury tampering, a felony punishable by one to three years in prison, for handing out pamphlets in front of the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse. Morrissey’s office says “Iannicelli set up a small booth with a sign that said ‘Juror Info’ in front of the courthouse and provided jury nullification flyers to jury pool members.” According to the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA), he distributed a FIJA brochure explaining that jurors have a “right to judge the law itself and vote on the verdict according to conscience,” along with “a flyer from another organization.”
You may wonder how threatening someone with prison for passing out political literature can possibly be consistent with the First Amendment. The short answer is that it’s not. The longer answer is that local and federal officials periodically harass activists like Iannicelli under the pretense of preventing unlawful interference with jury deliberations. The statute cited by Morrissey makes it a Class 5 felony to “communicate with a juror” outside of judicial proceedings with the intent to influence the juror’s “vote, opinion, decision, or other action in a case.” But Iannicelli was not trying to affect the outcome of any specific trial at the courthouse. He was merely passing out pamphlets with general information about the rights of jurors.