Just googled this new law. Your interpretation of it IS the one that prevails in that jurisdiction (so far). Will be interested to see how this plays out. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: while the evidence does prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client did shoot his wife five times in the head while she lay sleeping in their bed, you should not convict him of murder or any other crime because she had it coming; she had been cheating on him for years!”
UNBELIEVABLE.
Try this. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury: while the evidence does prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client did shoot his wife five times in the head while she lay sleeping in their bed, should you believe that people should not go to prison for killing people, you are well within your rights to vote “not guilty” for that reason.
I have never heard of any such BS in my life. Of late, for the most part, it is non-violent drug charges where this comes up. Also, could be argued that assisted suicide is not murder and shouldn’t be a crime. If you feel that way, you may vote your conscience AS YOU ALWAYS COULD. This is not contested in any place in the land. It is supported by the law. The only difference is that jurors are being apprised of what they always had instead of the judge getting away with telling them that they didn’t have it.
I have never heard so many people try to misapply simple thoughts!
Your restatement of my example is inaccurate and misleading. In my example, the jury is asked to ignore the law against murder because the victim was an adulterer. In your example, the jury is asked to ignore the law if they don’t believe murderers should go to jail. Those are to very different questions.
First, the defense has always been at liberty to try to justify the act by showing extenuating circumstances and still is, so your example fails as it doesn’t show the difference of before the law was passed and after it was passed.
Second, your objection due to the adulterer defense was also possible before the law, as in juror #6’s wife is fooling around on him and he will vote not guilty, cause he wants to kill his wife too.
Nothing has changed in this example.
I was showing that if the jurors don’t believe that murderers should go to prison, they are now being told that they may vote based on whether the act should be against the law or not which is different now from what jurors have been told in the past. Not sure how much influence that is going to have in murder trials, but I’m sure the example, like most examples here, was given for the most extreme possible scenario.
We must keep jurors ignorant or we can’t get the outcome we want!
Oh, my bad. We must lie to them or we can’t get the outcome we want!
My bottom line: The rule of law should always prevail; juries should always render their verdicts in accordance with the law; a jury that ignores the law is nothing more than a lynch mob without the rope and horses.
So, you believe that runaway slaves should have been returned to their masters, because the government got it right with the Fugitive Slave Laws?
So, you believe that people should have been imprisoned for printing negative stories about the government, because the government got it right with the Alien and Sedition Act?
So, you believe that our prisons should be full and overflowing because of non-violent drug CRIMES, because once again the infallable government got it right?
Yeah, The rule of law should always prevail!
And, in what universe do lynch mobs turn people loose?
So, you believe a jury should be free to acquit the person who punched you in the nose because you were smoking dope?
So, you believe a jury should be free to acquit the person who shot your neigbhor in the back because of the color of his skin?
So, you believe a good way to get rid of a law you don’t like is to make a law that allows jurors to ignore all laws?
In what universe is arbitrary application of the law better than uniform application of the law?
Go ahead and answer the questions. That is the crux of the thread.
Should the rule of law always prevail as you claim or should jurors consider if anyone should go to prison for this particular CRIME?
3 simple questions which, in my opinion, illustrate the folly of such a statement.
And to be fair, I will answer yours.
Not because I was smoking dope, but because people shouldn’t go to prison for punching people in the nose.
Not because of the color of his skin, but because people shouldn’t go to prison for shooting people in the back. Good luck selling that, but you certainly try.
I believe a good way to keep the government in check is to educate jurors to their powers to not enforce laws that they disagree with. Not all laws.
You try to persuade by your example, that just because someone explains to me that my car will do 140 mph, that now I have that information, I will be doing 140 in residential areas. It is a little stretch and misapplication of the information. So, informing me of my power to set aside murder charges along with 1/16 oz possession charges doesn’t mean people will do both.
Eagerly await your answers to my questions.
People shouldn’t go to prison for battery?
This isn’t math.
That’s called an analogy. To compare two different things to show similarity…
i.e. in math…8x(4+2) is the same as 8x4 + 8x2
In this example…
(to judge the facts and the application of the law in relation to the facts)
To judge the facts…and… to judge the application of the law in relation etc
See how To judge distributes over
facts
and
the application of the law
to become
To judge the facts…and… to judge the application of the law in relation
I can’t believe this has to be explained.
The point is, juries don’t let people off for wife battery. Or shooting someone in the back.
If the defendant had a really really good story why they did it, the jury might let them off, but such cases are few and far between.
Dr. Kevorkian DID get let off for killing terminally ill people - except that last time. (Side note - rarely is it “a sufficient amount of narcotics to relieve pain even if the narcotics hasten death” - it’s enough opiates to kill the person).
It’s been a long time since I heard of a jury letting someone white get off for killing a black man, althoguh there was a case in LA where a black guy was acquitted of killing two white people… Perhaps the Rodney King case is close, but IMHO that was as much about police as about race.
A jury pool can decide that possession of a miniscule amount of pot does not justify a charge of possession, depsie what the alw says.
Basically, yes, a jury can decide anything. There is no logical way to prevent that. To their credit, there is not rampant abuse, or even noticeable abuse, of the process. It is one more check that helps ensure justice is a moral as well as a legal outcome - even if occasionally we disagree with the verdict.
I already did. The questions you posed are rhetorical, leading and loaded so I responded in kind. The “crux of the thread” is whether jurors should be free to ignore the law; not whether there are-or have been-laws you and I disagree with.
Jurors decide whether the evidence presented proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant has committed the crime charged. They do not decide what the sentence will be (the only exception to this that I am aware of is that in PA jurors do decide whether the death penalty should be imposed upon defendants convicted of 1st degree murder).
You did NOT answer the questions I asked and we both know why.
You claim:
My questions were not rhetorical, they are from real cases with real jury nullification, unlike your distorted examples, and show that having the jury knowledgable about their power of nullification is a check on an overreaching government.
I simply posed 3 questions from real life cases to see if you really believe that the rule of law should ALWAYS prevail and juries should ALWAYS render verdicts as pushed by the court.
I know, it is a tough choice.
Send the slaves back to their masters or admit that the state might have got the law wrong?
Agree that people don’t have 1st amendment rights to print the truth or uphold the law?
Fill the prisons with non-violent people who aren’t hurting anyone?
These are big softball questions that anyone should just knock out of the park. I don’t understand your reluctance to admit that the government gets it wrong sometimes and the people need the power to say, “go pound sand”, we’re not sending people to prison for this.
I concede. You are right; I am wrong. Juries SHOULD be allowed to convict or acquit a person charged with committing a crime regardless of what the law is. Thanks for setting me straight. Sorry it took me so long to see the light.
Juries don’t select remedies.
I don’t know what you mean by this, md2000. An intentional killing for an evil purpose is pretty much the definition of murder, which is what Latimer was convicted of. What examples do you have where someone was proved in court to have intentionally killed without justification, and yet did not get convicted of murder?
About 30 years ago the daughter of a friend of mine was raped and murdered. The murderer then hid the body. While her disappearance was suspicious, it wasn’t proven that she was murdered until over a year after the crime. [I feel] the murderer was caught. He was put on trial and found not-guilty. One juror ended up convincing the others that there was not enough proof.
My friend was devastated by his daughter’s murder, and never really recovered.
The man accused of the murder was eventually caught and convicted after having raped and murdered a different girl. He spent most of the rest of his life in jail.
I can’t prove it, but I think this was a case of jury nullification where the one juror was against capital punishment.
Well, let`s pick as a random example the woman whose son was stomped to death by a random passing stranger leaving a bar in, IIRC, Hamilton, Ont a decade or two ago. A year and a half later, she was shocked to see the guy walking down the street. She called the police to tell them he had escaped jail, and they told her no, the man who stomped her son to death plead down to manslaughter instead of fighting the case, got double credit for time served waiting for trial. Calculate in parole after one-third sentence, and ta-da - he stomps some guy to death and walks free in 18 months. I recall this was one of the cases cited as a reason why the victims should have some notification to have a say at parole hearings.
Now if you believe that Latimer should have gotten 10 years to life for a mercy killing, if you believe that was an ***evil ***killing, then we have a legitimate disagreement and you see why I believe in jury nullification and it would be an interesting time if we were on the same jury. Remember, the jurors agreed he had committed a crime, but one said had they known of the mandatory sentence of no parole for 10 years, they would not have convicted. The judge even tried to overrule the mandatory sentence and give him less, but that was overturned. So I suspect they agree somewhat with my point of view.
However, a light sentence as a reward for heinous a crime if the criminal serve the convenience of the system by pleading guilty is not justice. The quality of justice is not strained, it droppeth as a lumpy diarrhea from heaven.
Also - People north and south of the border often plead down to manslaughter after using a gun to kill or injure someone. This is just laziness on the part of the prosecutor(IMHO). What do people think guns do (Other than not kill people because people kill people)? A lethal weapon is a lethal weapon. If the victim survives, it is simply luck and or poor aim on the part of the murderer. Who has ever credibly argued and shown in court that they did not aim to kill when firing a gun?
So in the example you give, he was convicted of manslaughter - presumably because the Crown did not think they could prove the necessary element of intention. Assaults in a bar situation can be fatal, but it is often difficult to prove that there was an intention to kill, which is what you used in your post. Intention to assault is not the same as intent to kill.
Similarly, the fact that someone dies from a gunshot does not automatically mean that the person who pulled the trigger intended to kill the deceased. The Crown must prove intent. That is not laziness - it is fulfilling their duty to try to put all relevant evidence before the Court, not to try to get a conviction on the most serious offence imaginable. Manslaughter or criminal negligence causing death are sometimes the appropriate charge for a fatal shooting, if the Crown can prove the accused was not exercising the proper level of attention, but does not have evidence of an intent to kill.