Jury Nullification

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BB93YJ

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This might be an interesting subject to familiarize ourselves with. I find it's particularly interesting, in light of recent Supreme Court rulings. I will just put the link here since it's a little bit long, (about three pages...) Still very good information.

Edited to add: Gun Content? The Supreme's not doing their job, (defending the Constitution, and it's application via laws), with Silviera case being denied cert. for instance, and Jury Nullification being the 'last line of defense' against tyranny.
 
Where/When I grew up....

Jury nullification, the Constitution, and the the Bill of Rights, all 10 of them, where standard grade school fare, and then reinforced in high school.

Now, it's considered advanced College material, if it's approached at all.

*** happened?

I'M 36. I'm Not That Bloody Old, that it should have changed so drastically in 20 years.
 
"I consider...[trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution...." - T. Jefferson

Yup. www.fija.org

If you get a chance to be on a jury TAKE IT! If the judge asks if you'll obey the law, even if you disagree with it, say YES! You're NOT lying, you're obeying the Constitution "the supreme law of the land", just because the judge doesn't think it is, doesn't mean it is not.

-Morgan (if you're on trial, and I'm in the jury pool, odds are 9/10 you're gettin' off)
 
OJ Simpson and William Jefferson Clinton ought to be the poster children for jury nullification.

Later:

You know, I wonder if someone could conduct a study on how many murder trials were nullified by white juries because the defendant was white and the victim was black/Indian/Mexican and "shouldn't've oughta been in that part of town/been dating that white woman/got uppity."

LawDog
 
Yeah, lawdog, there's been abuse of jury nullification, no doubt.

Similarly, there's been abuse of the right of arms.

I don't see anyone here seriously arguing that the existence of murderers invalidates RKBA.
 
Lawdog, you're correct in that racially motivated impulses have at times warped the jury nullification system (and it IS a system built into US law right at the beginning - every founder knew the story of William Penn's trial in England, as he later founded Pennsylvania).

We worked out a crude "patch" to solve such problems, in the form of charges under Federal law of violating civil rights. While it borders closely on double jeapordy, it HAS solved the problem of local racist juries doing stupid stuff in releasing racist murderers.

That has been a bigger problem than falsely accusing/convicting minorities, as convictions can get appealed and various law school teams and/or the ACLU have done a good job in such circumstances. In the case of wrongful aquittals, in theory there's no appeal and there WAS a rash of such releases all across the South during the 60's...today, it would be too risky for a Judge's career to allow such. Still, that's why Federal civil rights charges were (and sometimes still are) used.

None of that is a good reason to scrap jury nullification - it's a key part of the checks and balances and losing it is a disaster.
 
Jury nullification can seem good or bad to you, depending on who's walking as a result. In Mississippi in the early 1960s KKK members were walking after murdering civil rights workers. In Washington, D.C. today gang members are walking because jurors feel like too many black men are already in jail. It is democracy at work, as is everything that happens in a jury room. The jury is the voice of the people, which is why governments and businesses are always trying to control the jury.
 
Too many black men are in jail. And white men, and brown. But especially black men. Did you guys know that America now houses more than 2,000,000 prisoners, which is one fourth of all the prisoners on Earth? And yet we still like to think of ourselves as the land of the free.
 
One issue is that the same amount of drug in powdered cocaine form draws a far lower sentence than the same turned into crack.

The black community rightfully sees this as racist, and it is: the sentencing is biased based on the economic level of the criminals involved, PLUS the relative sentences for the importers (of powdered coke) is lower than for the inner-city (usually black) distributors.

That's just one example...basically, the "drug war" has had a strongly racist element in it going at least back to the 1920s.
 
So failing to convict for ulterior motives of the juror(s) now has a literary term of its own. This idea goes back to about Adam, as I recall from my reading. Guess what? It will never replace the need for violent response imho. Not only that but it can work to shield a real malefactor from well deserved comeuppance also.
 
Did you guys know that America now houses more than 2,000,000 prisoners, which is one fourth of all the prisoners on Earth? And yet we still like to think of ourselves as the land of the free.

So what? If someone commits a crime by harming someone they should be punished for it. What is the "right" number of people to have in jail, what's appropriate for a free country? Would we really be free if we let murderous thugs roams the streets to prey on more innocent people?
 
Micro, that's not the point.

The point is that a blanket statement like 'we have too many in jail' is foolish. It does not matter the raw number of people in jail if they deserve to be there, what matters whether or not "crimes" actually harm others. If we are throwing people in jail for things that do not harm the person or property of others, that's a problem, and it's a problem regardless of whether we have 2k in jail or 2 million in jail.
 
GG, while I agree that 2 million out of ~300mil isn't necessarily "too many," at some point your argument breaks down. When so many people are in jail that the CJS can't keep people incarcerated for the length of their sentences, too many people are in jail. In the extreme, if half the U.S. population were in jail, that would be "too many" because it would indicate a pervasive problem with society or the legal system, rather than just lots of crime.

The prison system isn't just some black box you can send bad people into. If the prison system can't accommodate the number of inmates, prison time for lesser crimes should be reduced or eliminated. Fortunately, that's not necessary in the U.S., because there are plenty of victimless (but high-grade) felonies that can be eliminated. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care, and that reform isn't happening.

The result of saying "there aren't too many people in prison" when the prison system can't handle its population is that bad criminals go free too soon.
 
tyme,

Build more jails if you're out of space, then repeat.

I think that we have a pervasive problem with society right now, and we dont have nearly half the population locked up.

Just for the record, I'm about as opposed to the drug war as one can be. If we eliminated that and the scores of other victimless crimes the crime rate would fall through the basement and we could close 70% of the jails in the country.

I have a deeper and more extensive plan for crime reduction but I'll get into that a different time as it tackles multiple issues.
 
Jury nullification is the "judical power of the people". The jury has the duty to insure (as best they can) justice. Law is not justice, law is the decree of the government. Justice is "right and wrong", not "legal or illegal". The jury is there to decide BOTH the facts of the case and the validity of the law - regardless of what the judge has to say. If the jury determines the law is unjust, then they declare the defendent "not guilty" and send him home. The judge's job is to keep the lawyers within bounds.

True, nullification was often used in past as an aide to persecuting minorities (and other "undesirables"), but then again, so were guns. I am no more interested in taking away a jury's right to nullify than I am in taking away an individual's right to own a gun. Both can be misused, but rarely are.

I also agree that there are too many people in jail, primarily because a good percentage of them are incarcerated for "statutory violations" rather than "real crimes". In my book a "crime" is an "injury" to another person, be it physical or financial. It is a violation of another person's rights. A lot of people are in jail (prison) for the injury they have done to themselves, not to others - i.e. the wonderful WOD.
 
Glock and tyme, read what the other is saying very carefully and objectively (don't prejudge). Unless I am misreading something it is starting to look like you are actually on the same side and are simply hung up on what you think the other is saying based on the wording being used.
 
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