People v. State

Judge Kimba Wood wrote in footnote 23 of her Opinion and Order:

The Government’s argument suggests that if Heicklen’s speech were found to be protected by the First
Amendment, that speech must still give way because of the danger that jurors who receive a pamphlet like
Heicklen’s will disregard a judge’s instructions to render a verdict according to the evidence introduced before them
and the law as presented by the court. The Court notes that our judicial system rests, in part, on the belief that jurors every day follow much more difficult instructions, for instance, instructions to disregard eyewitness testimony that
they just heard and ignore evidence that they just saw. It is just as reasonable to trust that jurors will follow a
judge’s instruction to accept the law as explained by the judge and disregard the contents of a pamphlet handed to
them by a leafletter outside the courthouse. The essence of the First Amendment is that falsehood and fallacies are
exposed more effectively through discussion than through suppression, and that public debate affords adequate
protection against the dissemination of “noxious doctrine.”

Which is the “noxious doctrine,” the falsehood and fallacy that will be more effectively exposed and protected against through discussion and public debate: The doctrine that jurors have no right to do wrong? Or the doctrine that they must follow the judge’s instructions, even if the judge instructs them to do wrong?

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