Jury Nullification

[JollyRoger]

Part of the law has always been that juries can nullify. Why the desire to nullify jury nullification?

 

[Berzerker]

However you did inadvertently hit the nail here, because morals are so different, and can be so extreme, that you change the function of a jury completely.

Jury nullification is as old as mankind, the first time enough people in a family, clan or tribe decided not to enforce an existing law because it just wouldn't be "right".

Why should this part of society be able to disregard the law, when no other part is*?

Because jurors are burdened with having to decide if someone's life or liberty is to be taken by the state - and because laws are not moral by virtue of being laws.

What about a cop deciding the law being violated, is against his moral compass, and therefore not something to intervene in?

Cops already prioritize their time and thats based in part on what they think is morally relevant

Would incest or paedophilia be accepted because the jury thought that it wasn't all that bad, as the victim didn't protest? (unfortunately a true story)

One jury decision aint gonna change any laws against child molestation

now consider the potential for abuse - rare jury decisions or the millions of abuses perpetrated by legislatures

do you have more "faith" in Congress or your own moral compass?

 

[duckstab]

I'm very much torn on this issue. On the one hand, it could be used as a check against judicial or prosecutorial misconduct. On the other, it could be used to shield the guilty from justice.

I'm thinking specifically of the Jim Crow South, where lynchings of black men were common but the perpetrators rarely even brought to trial. No doubt a major factor in that was the tacit understanding that no jury in those days would have handed down a conviction regardless of the evidence.

It's probably because so much corruption of the jury system existed in the past that lawyers and judges take a dim view of nullification now. But maybe we've gone too far in the other direction.

Rather than nullification, I'd consider giving juries some kind of voice in sentencing, so that obvious miscarriages of justice could be prevented.

 

[GhostWriter16]

I am confused by the poll options. What does downtown mean? I've seen that word brought up several times on this forum, and I never know what people are talking about. I don't think they mean the middle of a city.

He's a forum member regularly used in jokes for some reason.

It should be noted that disagreeing with the law is a quick way to get out of jury duty. As JR says, it's more about stopping a prosecutor from abusing their discretion. Genarlow Wilson's conviction for child molestation springs to mind. In that case, a 17-year-old was sent to prison for engaging in oral sex with a 15-year-old. Had it been vaginal sex, their close age would have made it not a crime. This was a case where some of the jury seemed to think they had no choice but to convict.

I would have voted not guilty. Without doubt.

These opinions contradict. Jury nullification is all about seeking justice in spite of the law; why should the death penalty be a special case?

I'm actually not sure how this works in DP cases. I think the prosecution could probably remove them anyway in voir dir so it wouldn't be an issue anyways. My issue wasn't that they could use jury nullification to ensure that life imprisonment, but that I wanted to avoid murderers actually getting RELEASED because of anti-DP people.

 

[History_Buff]

It's probably a good thing to have, but its a potentially dangerous practice letting lay people decide how the law is to be applied.

The wikipedia article on Jury Nullification has a brilliant quote from Justice Brian Dickson, out of R v. Morgentaler (the case that struck down anti-abortion legislation for any non-Canadians):

The contrary principle contended for by Mr. Manning, that a jury may be encouraged to ignore a law it does not like, could lead to gross inequities. One accused could be convicted by a jury who supported the existing law, while another person indicted for the same offence could be acquitted by a jury who, with reformist zeal, wished to express disapproval of the same law. Moreover, a jury could decide that although the law pointed to a conviction, the jury would simply refuse to apply the law to an accused for whom it had sympathy. Alternatively, a jury who feels antipathy towards an accused might convict despite a law which points to acquittal. To give a harsh but I think telling example, a jury fueled by the passions of racism could be told that they need not apply the law against murder to a white man who had killed a black man. Such a possibility need only be stated to reveal the potentially frightening implications of Mr. Manning's assertions. [...]

It is no doubt true that juries have a de facto power to disregard the law as stated to the jury by the judge. We cannot enter the jury room. The jury is never called upon to explain the reasons which lie behind a verdict. It may even be true that in some limited circumstances the private decision of a jury to refuse to apply the law will constitute, in the words of a Law Reform Commission of Canada working paper, "the citizen's ultimate protection against oppressive laws and the oppressive enforcement of the law" (Law Reform Commission of Canada, Working Paper 27, The Jury in Criminal Trials (1980)). But recognizing this reality is a far cry from suggesting that counsel may encourage a jury to ignore a law they do not support or to tell a jury that it has a right to do so.

I'm actually not sure how this works in DP cases. I think the prosecution could probably remove them anyway in voir dir so it wouldn't be an issue anyways. My issue wasn't that they could use jury nullification to ensure that life imprisonment, but that I wanted to avoid murderers actually getting RELEASED because of anti-DP people.

But that's just because you have a weird hard on for the death penalty.

I mean, if the punishment by law for shoplifting was torture, followed by drawing and quartering, a jury would be absolutely right in thinking that cruel and unusual punishment, and acquitting the accused to avoid this. The death penalty is different only in scale.

 

[JollyRoger]

@ ghostwriter - Trials usually progress in the guilty/not guilty phase and then the punishment phase. What you are asking is the right to stop things in the first phase, but not let anti-dp people have the same right.

 

[Camikaze]

If it's meant to be a check on government power or something, it's a pretty lousy and inconsistent way to go about it. Juries seem fairly outdated in the first place, though.

 

[Berzerker]

No, but I would have done so with the expectation that I would be prosecuted for not following the law.

NO?!?!? Thats jury nullification You just replaced the law with your morality, regardless of what you expect from a prosecutor

The jury is there to uphold the law, not to change it. That would be a violation of the basic Montesquieu system.

The jury is there to seek justice - thats a moral endeavor - by judging both the state and the accused. If the state cannot make a moral case for depriving the accused of their life or liberty it doesn't matter what the law says, but we could ask Jesus

The law is a piss poor moral compass, but should be created by the society, not an individual*.

Immoral laws should not be created or enforced by anyone. Thats what jury nullification is about - protecting people from "society".

Some people are pointing to Jim Crow and white juries allegedly letting white murderers off the hook for crimes against blacks, but that wasn't nullification - they weren't protesting laws against murder, they were hypocritical racists surrounded by hypocritical racists and they were "society" - or just scared of the KKK. If anything, it was society that corrupted those juries.

 

[_random_]

I'm broadly okay with it, although "I disagree with the law." by itself is a pretty flimsy reason. The first option probably fit me the best.

 

[BvBPL]

I like it, but I don't think I would practice it if I simply disagreed with the law. I think there would have to be some miscarriage of justice or other circumstance for me to practice it.

As a defense attorney, it is also frustrating to not be allowed to bring up the concept of nullification, though I will try to sneak it in somehow if I can.

Move to Baltimore then. I think it is allowed in Maryland.

If someone is technically guilty but does not deserve punishment or rehabilitation, then the only recourse really is jury nullification.

Crown v. Dudley.

Or the DA could simply choose not to press charges.

 

[Zack]

I am confused by the poll options. What does downtown mean? I've seen that word brought up several times on this forum, and I never know what people are talking about. I don't think they mean the middle of a city.

Do you understand the concept of language other than the literal type?

 

[GoodGame]

I'd say it will spontaneously arise if warranted. Moral conscience really is all of us, not just a book of codes, especially those chosen by lot to be on the jury. The judge should still police the jury against extreme forms of this.

 

[Mark1031]

I absolutely believe in it. It's a fundamental checks against injustice. All jurors should know they have the right to vote their conscience if they feel it's prudent. The prosecution is free to dismiss them before the trial if the state feels that conscience has no barring in the case.

I was excluded from a jury by the prosecutor for just such a reason. I said in response to some absurd scenario that I might follow my conscience rather than the judges instructions. The 90 other people in the room apparently had none.

 

[GoodGame]

IDK, I think it's not necessarily a lack of conscience, but a different set of values.
One says the laws are always just by the fact they were democratically placed (imperfectly), the other says that a degree of constructiveness is always welcome within the checks and balances of government. I'd agree that have a purely legalistic perspective on law can lead to immoral situations in which a horde of lemmings perpetuates a large immorality in the name of some form of justice.

 

[Truronian]

I'm actually not sure how this works in DP cases. I think the prosecution could probably remove them anyway in voir dir so it wouldn't be an issue anyways. My issue wasn't that they could use jury nullification to ensure that life imprisonment, but that I wanted to avoid murderers actually getting RELEASED because of anti-DP people.

I don't know how it works either; if it's a case of death penalty or release that seems pretty daft. Might I remind you of the opinion you held in the other thread:

Who says I care? If I were on a jury I would outright refuse to convict someone of violating a law I didn't agree with. And even if I agreed with the law, if a draconian penalty would be the most likely result of a conviction, I would also refuse to convict (So I'd pretty much vote not guilty on any drug charge.)

If you think it's OK for you to do this but not others, then that (as others have said) is hypocrisy.

 

[Souron]

I believe that a jury should make rulings that consider the specific details of the case, including the intent and moral standing of the law. No one should be convicted on a technicality. However, I think the jury should work on the assumption that the law is legitimate when applied in it's indented form.

I voted "other."

 

[amadeus]

Nullify away! I would nullify all victimless crimes.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

He's one of the guys on this forum who is often a joke option in the polls.

Yet ironically, considering the quality of some of the poll options that are often available, seriously the best one.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

GW, some of these guys remind me of you.

 

[Mark1031]

IDK, I think it's not necessarily a lack of conscience, but a different set of values.
One says the laws are always just by the fact they were democratically placed (imperfectly), the other says that a degree of constructiveness is always welcome within the checks and balances of government. I'd agree that have a purely legalistic perspective on law can lead to immoral situations in which a horde of lemmings perpetuates a large immorality in the name of some form of justice.

I know they have a conscience. It was more intimidation and go alongism. It was really absurd. The prosecutor started with robbing a bank-we all agree this is a crime right. She then went lower and lower and I raised my hand when she got to finding $1 on the street and not turning it in. Would you follow the judge and convict if he told you this is considered a crime? I believe no one in the room would actually believed this a crime but I was the only one who spoke up.