Juries

The Right to Trial is Vanishing. Could Bolder Juries Save It?

A new campaign by the Cato Institute aims to educate jurors on their right to vote their conscience against unjust laws and sentences.

C.J. Ciaramella | 9.4.2026 4:10 PM

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Paul St. Louis says he regrets his 2017 vote to convict a man of drug offense, leading to a 40-year mandatory minimum sentence. (Courtesy of CATO Institute)

When Paul St. Louis voted as a juror in 2017 to convict Frederick Turner for his role in a methamphetamine dealing ring, St. Louis had no idea that prosecutors would stack the charges in such a way that Turner, a first-time offender, received a 40-year mandatory minimum sentence.

The judge presiding over the trial declared Turner's sentence "excessive" and "wrong," but had no choice but to impose it. Less than a year later, Turner, 38, was found dead in his cell at a high-security federal prison in Colorado.

Ever since, St. Louis has been haunted by Turner's death, and the knowledge in hindsight that there may have been more he could have done in his role as a juror.

"If I could go back in time, and if I knew Frederick faced 40 years, I would vote to acquit him," St. Louis said in a new jury-education campaign launched this week by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "I could have asked what sentence would be imposed. I could have drawn my own conclusions if no one would answer. And I could have voted my conscience."

The nonpartisan initiative, Your Verdict Counts, aims to educate jurors on three things the Cato Institute says they should know but are rarely, if ever, told: that jurors have the right to decide if a law is........

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