Extraordinary Case in Brooklyn: OM Under Fire
There is an extraordinary case in Brooklyn where federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of NY do not like a practice called “Orgasmic Meditation” or “OM.”
Through an unprecedented federal prosecution, they hope to shut it down.
Shutting down meditation practices is not unique to the EDNY. In China, they did not like the practice of Falun Gong, and made the practice illegal and arrested practitioners.
Falon Gong is dangerous – to Communist China
But in the US, meditation is legal. They can’t simply arrest people for practicing OM. They had to find a federal crime and arrest the leader, Nicole Daedone.
The Brooklyn prosecutors tried for sex trafficking but could not find anyone trafficked. Then they tried for forced labor, but no one was forced to labor. Finally, they settled on an unprecedented charge: forced labor conspiracy as a standalone charge without anyone being forced to labor.
Historical Parallels: Salem Witch Trials
In nearby Massachusetts Bay, the government disliked the practices of women who used rituals not entirely dissimilar to OM.
The Salem witch trials began in 1692. After a splendid year-long 100 percent conviction rate and the execution of 20 witches, juries decided the court of Oyer and Terminer had gone a little too far. They nullified the witchcraft law with consecutive hung juries and acquittals.
The Witchcraft in OM
A clue to what rankled the EDNY about OM is found in the prosecution’s bail memo of Daedone. They wanted a $1,000,000 bail. They had to prove she was a danger to the community to get such a high bail. They could articulate no dangerous conduct other than:
“Daedone poses a continuing danger to the community. Based on information obtained during the investigation, as recently as this year, Daedone has returned to performing public OM demonstrations…”
Nicole Daedone, deemed dangerous
The government did not arrest Daedone for public OM demonstrations, for the practice is legal.
The government hoped the judge would believe the practice was dangerous to the community. However, the prosecution did not ask the judge to ban Daedone from performing public OM demonstrations as a bail condition. They couldn’t because OM is legal.
Public Demonstrations: Legal Yet Controversial
This is reminiscent of how William Penn and William Mead had public demonstrations of Quakerism—in England. It was not illegal to practice Quakerism at home, but the Conventicle Act restricted non-Anglican religious gatherings. The police arrested Penn and Mead.
The prosecution proved their case during their trial at the Old Bailey in London. There were witnesses that Penn and Mead brought people together and taught a dangerous practice.
Nevertheless, the jury delivered a not-guilty verdict in the face of this indisputable evidence.
Judge John Howel refused to accept the verdict. He ordered the jury locked in a room without food or drink until they changed their verdict. After 48 hours, the jurors refused to deliver a guilty verdict.
There was a chance they would die for this cause, so the judge fined the jurors and remanded them to Newgate Prison until they paid the fine. The foreman, Edward Bushell, and four others refused to pay.
England was getting fired up. Englanders had once forced King John to sign Magna Carta under the threat of losing his head.
Edward Bushell: A Test of Jury Power
Sir John Vaughan, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, ruled that the government could not punish jurors for their verdicts. Bushell and the others were released.
Penn left England, went to the New World, and founded a place called Pennsylvania where he set up a community based on freedom of spiritual practices.
The jury foreman, Edward Bushell’s persistence, became the tremendous legal test of who has the last say in an acquittal—the jury or the judge – the jury.
In America, especially in the EDNY, they try to ensure that no one like Bushell ever gets on a jury.
In EDNY, they try to weed them out. If a juror knows what Bushell knew, fought for, and secured, they might figure out that you don’t put women in jail on a trumped-up conspiracy charge because you don’t like her meditation practice.
Property Rights Undone By Jury
In 1850, Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Law, which was meant to return stolen property. If the property runs away, the owner has the right to get it back. That’s common law.
If your dog runs away tomorrow, you can take a collar and force it back. If somebody tries to prevent you—you have the right to get your property forcibly, and the law is supposed to help.
But for reasons unclear, people in New York did not think it was necessary to return slaves to their rightful owners.
Congress had to make a law that two-legged property can’t just cross state lines and suddenly become human.
The law is the law.
But slaves kept running away.
The fugitive slave law of 1850 provided stiff punishment for “criminals” who helped slaves escape.
In Syracuse, New York, the government indicted 24 criminals for helping a slave escape from jail. A federal judge called the defendants “disturbers of society.”
Four jury trials ended in three acquittals and forced the government to drop the charges.
The Shadrach Minkins Case
Shadrach Minkins tried to cheat the law by running away.
A crowd broke into a Boston courtroom and grabbed the property of John DeBree, a U.S. Navy officer from Norfolk, Virginia. His property was a slave called Shadrach Minkins, and they turned him loose.
The judge called the defendants’ actions “beyond the scope of human reason.”
President Millard Fillmore demanded prosecution. A grand jury indicted three people. Daniel Webster led the prosecution.
After one acquittal and several hung juries, the government had to drop the charges, realizing they could never get 12 men to agree to punish someone for helping a man escape slavery in Boston.
They should have tried the case in Brooklyn.
Because of these juries, a network of “criminals” called abolitionists organized, knowing that northern juries would not convict them.
Consequences of Jury Nullification
Things got worse. Tensions rose. The property kept running away.
The Southern States seceded. The Civil War followed, then the Emancipation Proclamation.
If northern juries had followed the law as the judge directed, the southern gentry might still enjoy the benefits of slaves working in their plantations, in accordance with federal law.
Prohibition: The Jury’s Role
In the US, the Constitution was amended to prohibit the sale of alcohol because 66 percent of the people wanted to help the other 33 percent quit drinking.
A bunch of mainly women didn’t think their men should use liquor because men would drink and act stupid. Maybe they wouldn’t go to church on Sunday after they got a snootful on Saturday night.
The temperance women had an idea, and just enough male politicians who knew that women could vote got the two-thirds majority they needed to pass a constitutional amendment that decreed nobody could drink.
There were some people, including some greasy Italians whose ancestors had been fermenting grapes since before there were laws, who started bootlegging to people who liked to drink. The government arrested all kinds of people.
During Prohibition, juries nullified alcohol control laws about 60 percent of the time. The fact that most juries would not convict made the use of alcohol widespread throughout Prohibition.
The jury made it a toothless amendment, which was repealed in 13 years.
In short, the government could not enforce a constitutional amendment because of the jury.
Ignorance Rising: Sparf v. United States
By 1895, so many people knew their rights as jurors that it looked like freedom would forever plague the land.
In Sparf v. United States (1895), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that federal judges were not required to inform juries about their power to nullify laws.
This decision meant a judge could silence an attorney who wanted to tell jurors they had the right to acquit defendants based on their moral judgment, even if the evidence supported a conviction under the law.
The Sparf ruling tried to reverse the primary role of the jury, which is to approve the law by deceiving jurors into believing their only role is determining the facts of the case.
As a result, many jurors, unaware of their ability to return verdicts based on their conscience, wrongly think they must follow the judge’s instructions.
The Sparf decision did not eliminate jury nullification. It only increased the jury’s ignorance.
The Antidote to Majority Rule
Any judge on the federal bench can lie to the jury and say you cannot veto the law; you cannot even hear about it. However, it is a lie, as the judge cannot punish a jury for their verdict.
John Adams said, “It is not only [the jurors’] right but their duty… to find the verdict according to their own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”
Ben Franklin said jury nullification is “better than law, it ought to be law, and will always be law wherever justice prevails.”
Suppose in Brooklyn, they pass a law that wolves can compel lambs to surrender to the frying pan, and a lamb runs away. The EDNY takes the lamb to trial. On the jury, there are eleven dogs and a ram.
The judge tells the jury, “You have to follow the law. Wolves can eat lambs, it does not matter what you think of the law.”
Eleven dogs vote guilty. But the ram votes not guilty and hangs the jury.
Wolves can’t even legally eat lambs because, just like they did with witches and slaves, one juror can prevent the law from being enforced—case by case.
The Jury’s Power: Ignorance and Control
People don’t understand. The government doesn’t want them to understand.
We could not be number one in putting the most people in prison if jurors knew they should judge the law and the prosecutors’ motives, not just the evidence of guilt or innocence.
Nicole Daedone wants to teach OM to adults, and they charged her with a 12-year forced labor conspiracy that failed.
This is not a case of right or wrong. This is not a case of legal or illegal. This is a case where the government doesn’t want slaves flying on a broomstick, running off their owner’s land, or teaching Falun Gong or OM; it doesn’t matter.
OM is not illegal. But the government thinks it’s a dangerous practice.
Some people in Brooklyn think all religions teach dangerous things. But this case is not about what someone can teach. Philosophy and theology are not illegal.
A Case of Government Control
It’s about government control. William Penn publicly taught Quakerism. Falun Gong taught meditation, and arrests were made in old England, communist China, and Salem when people taught what the government didn’t like.
At least the EDNY is transparent. They don’t like what Daedone teaches—it’s dangerous. They do not try to lie and say she forced anyone to labor. No one practiced OM unless they wanted to practice.
Americans have the right to discuss these things, thanks to the jury.
Freedom of the Press: The Zenger Case
In 1734, John Peter Zenger’s newspaper criticized the Royal Governor of New York. Criticizing the government was against the law in Colonial America, as it still is in many countries without juries.
The prosecutors charged Zenger with seditious libel.
At his trial, Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, admitted Zenger broke the law but asked the jury to acquit because the law was wrong.
Zenger also published the truth.
Justice James Delaney disagreed. “The truth is no defense,” he ruled. The law is the law.
Hamilton urged the jury “to make use of their own consciousness and understandings in judging the lives, liberties or estates of their fellow subjects,” declaring jurors “have the right, beyond all dispute, to determine both the law and the fact.”
Hamilton added that if jurors cannot nullify bad laws, then “juries (are) useless, to say no worse . . . The next step would make the people slaves.”
The jury acquitted Zenger, though he broke the law: He had criticized the governor.
The trial transcripts were widely published in Colonial America, and the verdict encouraged more literature critical of England by Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, and others.
If Zenger’s jurors had obeyed the judge’s directions, the people of America might still enjoy British rule.
Jefferson on the Importance of Juries
Since no government will ever say its laws are wrong, Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
Asked whether it was more important for the people to vote or be on a jury, Jefferson said, “Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the legislative (voting to elect representatives) or judiciary department (jury), I would say it is better to leave them out of the legislative. The execution of the laws (through the jury approval) is more important than the making of them.”
Back in Brooklyn: The Daedone Case
Nicole Daedone
Today, we have Nicole Daedone teaching OM.
I may not like it. You may not like it. But I’m not here to like it. I’m here to discuss whether, if the government doesn’t like it, they can trump up something to imprison Daedone, even in the Eastern District of New York, where rules are meant to be broken in favor of the government and the Constitution is just an old yellowing piece of paper written long ago.
But the risk to the prosecution is that once the jury sees the putrid odor of this case and its false nature, one or two jurors, or all of them, will see through it, and Daedone will walk free.
She will join Penn, Zenger, Minkins, and the spared witches and have the right to legally assemble and teach what they want and raise a toast to the jury. And we can write about it even if it is critical of the EDNY and what we will write is that without the jury, none of us would be safe for a moment and that a jury will hear the case of Nicole Daedone.
