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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 31st,
2023. It's about 3.35, sorry, in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. I'm ecstatic at the outcome of this federal prosecution of Mark Houck.
Mark, as you may recall, was prosecuted by the federal government for shoving somebody.
The person he shoved, who he said he thought was about to harm his son,
was a demonstrator standing in front of an abortion
facility in Pennsylvania. Shoved the guy, police report, went home. Two days later,
25 FBI agents show up at his house dressed as a SWAT team, you know, in full military gear,
banging on the front door, saying, open up the door or we'll break it down. And they take
him out in handcuffs in the presence of his wife and crying and screaming children. All of this
for a shove. What is the federal interest? Well, the federal government has enacted a statute
that makes it a felony to interfere with someone who is demonstrating outside of a facility that
provides abortions.
The theory of the government here is that Mark, by shoving this guy, shoved the demonstrator
and therefore impaired the demonstrator's ability to express his First Amendment freedom. The
demonstrator was demonstrating in favor of the abortion. In fact, the demonstrator was actually
escorting someone into the abortion facility, a young woman who was going there to
have a consult about having an abortion. So we have free speech here, the right of the demonstrator
to demonstrate. We have parental control, the right of Mark Houck to make sure no one's going
to harm his kid. And we have a little bit of breathing room. So there was a little bit of shoving that went on.
Nobody fell. Nobody was hurt. There's no lawsuits, as far as I know, coming from it. But the feds,
just like they did with some people that spoke up at board of education meetings in Virginia,
when they were discussing whether or not the seven-year-olds were going to be taught about
sex changes, the feds arrested parents who they felt were expressing their opinion a little too aggressively.
Every once in a while, juries do the right thing. There's no question but that Mark Houck
pushed this guy. The jury found him not guilty. Why? This is called jury nullification. This is a principle of law about which judges will never tell jurors almighty federal government, leave us the hell alone.
You shouldn't be prosecuting this.
You don't go arresting a guy at 5 o'clock in the morning, yanking him out of his bed and out of his house in front of his wife and children with 25 armed FBI SWAT team members because he pushed somebody on a public sidewalk. So sometimes jurors send a
resounding message to the federal government. That's what happened in the case of Mark Houck.
Some people are saying, that's a pro-life case. I'm tired of hearing things about pro-life.
All right, but it's also an FBI case. It's a case about FBI overreaching.
It's a case about the feds over prosecuting.
It's a case about a jury doing the right thing.
Jury nullification is as old as the nation itself. The first published opinion about jury nullification takes place during the war of 1812.
It's a long and interesting story, too long and very interesting. I won't recount it now,
but it's as American as the jury system itself, and I'm very happy to see that it happened here.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.