Guy arrested for handing out pamphlets on jury nullifaction at courthouse. Guilty of jury tampering?

[Acid_Lamp]

@acsenray

I really can’t believe some of the overwrought handwringing going on in this thread. The picture painted of the legal system here is so cartoonish and melodramatic, I really don’t know where to start.

Legislatures make laws. The executive accuses people of violating those laws. Judges decide what laws mean. Juries weigh evidence and determine who is telling the truth and what events occurred. That is the structure of our legal system. This is how the balance if power is structured and the public has a direct or indirect voice in each of these divided roles. No one entity is given the power to overrule the rest based on some petulant whim. That would be anti-democratic. And the anti-tyranny role given to the jury is not the role of august the legislature or executive or judge has enacted or enforced a law they disagree with. That’s the role of the voters during an election. The role of the jury is simply to determine the truth of the allegations set before them. Doing anything beyond that is interference with the democratic system.

That’s just the point though. What is “the truth”? The prosecution would like you believe that it is binary, either someone did something or they didn’t; simple as that. The defense might well wish to argue for a more encompassing definition, taking the position that each case should be heard in all it’s angles and make sure the jury knows that the law may be misapplied in this case. It is no fabrication that the prosecution, many judges, and by extension the legal system takes advantage of the average person’s lack of knowledge to streamline deliberations. Judges are free to instruct the jury to disregard lines of questioning, etc…

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

It is binary. Either you committed the act you are accused of committing, or you didn’t. Whether or not the act was a crime is for the judge to decide- a system which neatly separates two related but ultimately not interconnected questions.

[Acsenray]

@Acid_Lamp

That’s just the point though. What is “the truth”? The prosecution would like you believe that it is binary, either someone did something or they didn’t; simple as that. The defense might well wish to argue for a more encompassing definition, taking the position that each case should be heard in all it’s angles and make sure the jury knows that the law may be misapplied in this case.

Nonsense. Prosecution: A did X, which is a crime under Y law. Defense: Wrong. Jury: A did or did not do X. Judge: X is or is not a crime under Y law. Is is all binary.

It is no fabrication that the prosecution, many judges, and by extension the legal system takes advantage of the average person’s lack of knowledge to streamline deliberations.

Prove it.

Judges are free to instruct the jury to disregard lines of questioning, etc…

No, judges are obligated to instruct the jury to disregard improperly introduced evidence, the vast majority of which falls upon the prosecution.

[Acid_Lamp]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

It is binary. Either you committed the act you are accused of committing, or you didn’t. Whether or not the act was a crime is for the judge to decide- a system which neatly separates two related but ultimately not interconnected questions.

Mandatory sentencing and minimum guidelines remove that power from the judge. I can’t think of a lot of cases where a jury would return a guilty verdict and then the Judge would decline to sentence. He or she would have thrown the case out from the beginning.

[Tilley]

>>No one entity is given the power to overrule the rest based on some petulant whim.<<

Well, it’s indisputable that this statement is not accurate: The jury, in our system, does indeed have that power. De facto and not de jure, certainly, but it has the plenary and unchecked power to do precisely that. At least in criminal cases, where judgements NOV are not authorized.

The question at issue is whether or not this power should be recognized, up front, and incorporated into the system, or is it the 800 lb. elephant in the room that no one can talk about?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Mandatory sentencing and minimum guidelines remove that power from the judge. I can’t think of a lot of cases where a jury would return a guilty verdict and then the Judge would decline to sentence. He or she would have thrown the case out from the beginning.

Interesting that you bring up sentencing guidelines. The Supreme Court ensured just a couple of years ago that some powers are inherently reserved for the jury when it ruled that the federal (and by extension, most state) sentencing guidelines are no longer mandatory.

Hardly emblematic of a system in which the power of the jury is forever being chipped away.

And judges can and do sentence defendants to time served, and things like that, which is effectively the same as refusing to sentence.

[Acsenray]

@Acid_Lamp

Mandatory sentencing and minimum guidelines remove that power from the judge. I can’t think of a lot of cases where a jury would return a guilty verdict and then the Judge would decline to sentence. He or she would have thrown the case out from the beginning.

How does mandatory sentencing – which, by the way, is popular with yhe public but despised by judges – affect a judge’s jurisprudential role?

[Acid_Lamp]

@acsenray

Prove it.

From the Ohio Bar:

The judge also will instruct the jurors that they are to decide the case only on the evidence lawfully presented in the courtroom and** must not conduct their own investigation, experiments, or research into the facts or law**, that they must follow the law contained in the judge’s instructions, and that they must wait until all the evidence has been presented and the case is submitted to them for their group deliberation before they determine guilt or innocence.

Bolding mine.

I’d say that’s a pretty restrictive and manipulative version of “the truth”. I understand the rationale, but that doesn’t make it ethical, or just.

As the trial progresses, the judge may further instruct the jury regarding its consideration of certain testimony. For instance, if the judge concludes certain testimony should not be admitted into evidence, the judge will instruct the jurors to disregard that evidence they may have heard.

So basically, jurors can be instructed to ignore certain versions of the event for a number of reasons. :rolleyes: I’m certain that’s never, ever been abused.

Courts generally will assume that jurors will follow a judge’s instructions to disregard evidence. However, there are times when a matter may be so prejudicial to a party that a court cannot reasonably expect or trust that a jury will follow instructions to disregard the evidence. In those situations, a party may ask the judge to declare a mistrial, to dismiss the case and let it start again before a new jury.

Even better. Should things go badly enough, we can just complain that the jury isn’t returning the correct verdict and start over before the double jeopardy clause takes effect.
Every one of these procedures is designed to weight the power of the state, not the defense, though it can be used to a lesser degree by it. They are designed to limit, manipulate, restrict, and censor a free and open exchange and examination of the evidence by the jury. A group of people who are ultimately deciding the fate of another human being, something some of us take rather seriously.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

This is a complete non-sequitur. People who accept plea bargains are waiving their right to a trial (or at least their right to a trial on their guilt). You make it sound as though people accept plea bargains because they can’t have a trial. They don’t. They accept plea bargains because they expect to be found guilty at trial (or in rare circumstances, because they don’t want to go through a trial, or whatever the case may be).

We are straying off topic but plea bargains can be distinctly unfair. E.g. “If you take this to court we will go for 10 years in prison…accept the plea for two years and maybe you will be out in one with good behavior.”

You want to roll the dice on such a deal? Lots of people, understandably, choose not to gamble.

Your public defender is probably (slightly) better paid than any of the state attorneys who will prepare the prosecution’s case. Granted, the prosecution invariably has more funds available than the public defender, but for several reasons, prosecuting any given criminal case is much harder than defending it. The prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense need only show that reasonable doubt exists (and might not even have to do that, if the prosecution fails to meet its burden).

It is not about the quality of Public Defenders. I’m sure some are ace. There are also cases I could cite where the PD literally fell asleep during the trial.

More to the point is how much the state can spend on lab work and so on. That far, far, far outstrips what a PD can manage.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Acid_Lamp

So basically, jurors can be instructed to ignore certain versions of the event for a number of reasons. :rolleyes: I’m certain that’s never, ever been abused.

Well, yes. Like when the cops beat you until you confessed.

[suranyi]

@Whack-a-Mole

Thing is I am not sure nullification has ever been overly abused. Sure, we can cite cases where there was a miscarriage of justice due to nullification but we can likewise cite cases where most would agree justice was served via nullification.

See, the thing is that I am hard-pressed to think of any real case where justice was served via nullification. I can think of cases where it would have been served, but none where it actually happened.

[The_Second_Stone]

The man is entitled to deliver political messages in writing at a courthouse. Cohen v. California. It is about as clear a first amendment protection as there is. Was he blocking the entrance? No. Was he singling out jurors or potential jurors? No.

I understand that the government does not want juror nullification to become known to the public, particularly the public at courthouses, but the government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and the right to petition the government.

Frankly, the guy could wear a juror nullification jacket in the corridor of the courthouse and stand in front of the doorway to the jury room according to Cohen v. California (or is it California v. Cohen) and they should be pleased at the restraint that he has shown.

[Bricker]

@The_Second_Stone

The man is entitled to deliver political messages in writing at a courthouse. Cohen v. California. It is about as clear a first amendment protection as there is. Was he blocking the entrance? No. Was he singling out jurors or potential jurors? No.

I understand that the government does not want juror nullification to become known to the public, particularly the public at courthouses, but the government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and the right to petition the government.

Frankly, the guy could wear a juror nullification jacket in the corridor of the courthouse and stand in front of the doorway to the jury room according to Cohen v. California (or is it California v. Cohen) and they should be pleased at the restraint that he has shown.

I don’t agree that Cohen v. California is on point. Cohen involved a draft dodger wearing a “Fuck the Draft,” jacket inside a courtroom; he was arrested for disturbing the peace.

The Court reversed because the jacket didn’t disturb the peace:

The conviction quite clearly rests upon the asserted offensiveness of the words Cohen used to convey his message to the public. The only “conduct” which the State sought to punish is the fact of communication.
.
.
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Further, the State certainly lacks power to punish Cohen for the underlying content of the message the inscription conveyed. At least so long as there is no showing of an intent to incite disobedience to or disruption of the draft, Cohen could not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, be punished for asserting the evident position on the inutility or immorality of the draft his jacket reflected.

Here, the state’s claim will presumably be that the pamphleteer was doing something far more specific: interfering with the operation of juries by urging use of jury nullification. In fact, that was a key element of the Court’s ruling in Cohen, noting that:

In the first place, Cohen was tried under a statute applicable throughout the entire State. Any attempt to support this conviction on the ground that the statute seeks to preserve an appropriately decorous atmosphere in the courthouse where Cohen was arrested must fail in the absence of any language in the statute that would have put appellant on notice that certain kinds of otherwise permissible speech or conduct would nevertheless, under California law, not be tolerated in certain places.

Here, that distinction is certainly present. There’s no question that he has a general right to distribute written material, but the choice to distribute his material on the same steps that jurors use to enter the courtroom is evidence of his specific desire to incite jurors.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

I’m guessing he was thinking of Bridges v. California, which is a bit more on point.

[Bricker]

And just as an aside: he’s representing himself on this charge, and he’s asked the trial judge to strike all Muslims from his jury, on the grounds that he’s Jewish.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Sounds reasonable to me.

[Acsenray]

Presumably he’s hoping that a non-Muslim jury will be amenable to nullification. Somebody’s a-gonna be standin’ up in the courthouse and is a-gonna be speechifyin’!

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

In a sense, he ought to be thrilled to bits. Finally, a chance to put his theory into practice.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

The charge appears to be a misdemeanor. I always thought all federal crimes were felonies.

[Acsenray]

Why would you think so?