The New York Times explains
I am quite opposed to Amendment A. It’s hard enough for a jury to get the facts right and to apply actual law. I don’t want 12 random people to make up the law as they go along.
This “I’m guilty but” amendment is not likely to be used much, but think of the billing hours and dollars saved if it passed. Of course, that’s probably why lawyer groups are against it.
Anti-democractic? Twelve jurors of ordinary citizens would be more democractic(and possibly more reasonable) than many of the judicial rules we hear about. Instead of justice, our legal system has developed into who has the biggest bank account to hire the cleverist liars and much of the process is obscuring the truth and hair splitting.
Remember, under such an amendment defendents would have admitted guilt, only the justice of the law under those particular circumstances would be at stake. Isn’t that what we really want anyway, justice?
Y’know, december, I’m completely on your side on this one. While I agree that the criminalization of merely-obnoxious behavior is on the rise, the appropriate way to deal with that is to have citizens demand their elected representatives change the laws.
Rather than this policy getting rid of dollar-based justice, it would make the problem worse. All you have to do is hire a lawyer who can persuade the jury to ignore the law, not that the prosecution didn’t meet its burden of proof. In other words, the trial becomes a popularity contest – if you’re convincing, you’re free. The specter of laws applied haphazardly is even worse than a system of annoying laws.
Agree that this is a bad idea. Simply because a law is annoying does not mean that it is invalid. This can only lead to chaos, and probably raises some 14th ammendment issuses. (or would a single jury’s decision to nullify be precedent that the law is invalid in all cases?) Either way, this is Bad Idea Jeans territory.
Isn’t chaos already the order of our time? We have representatives who are making “our” decisions based upon who can spend the most money on influencing their votes. When in reality most of the laws being imposed today have nothing to do with the desires and needs of Joe Six-Pack.
In an ideal world our reps would consider our values and needs above the political ramifications and big money influence of corporate structures.
I would love to believe that my President, Congressman, Senator have my best interests at heart, but I am not naive enough, nor ignorant enough to buy into the arguments of “Drug War” or “WOMD” that our government trumpets.
What is wrong with a group of “my peers” dissecting the information given to them and making a realistic decision that affects the life of my brothers and sisters?
I don’t give a damn if the the lawyers and law enforcement folks don’t consider it wise or prudent! I would rather have the consensus of twelve individuals of varying degrees of experiences, education and values deciding what is real or not. Makes perfect sense to me.
This seems like a very realistic attempt to retain some of the control that the commen man should have over the “heavy handed” system, which may have started out with good intentions, but in my view has developed into something of an “800 pound gorilla”. A very nice “check and balance” in my humble opion.
oops. opinion
That may work on a jury, but I don’t think judges and lawyers themselves will be fooled so easily. And those judges are the same people who can strike down unconstitutional laws. Are you so sure that giving juries effective lawmaking power will somehow be a better idea than experienced judges (or even studied political appointees)?
And yes, I think it is undemocratic. Aahala and Sezyou, why do you assume that having 12 of your peers (which means your going to get juries as dumb as rocks) review laws because a lawyer can get them to agree its “unwise” is a good thing? How does this help society?
[czarcasm]What a wonderful idea! This way “my” kind can just follow the laws we feel like following, while at the same time we can dispense JUSTICE to those that aren’t like us and don’t really belong here anyway.[/czarcasm] 
I think I’m with december on this. Imperfect as the electoral process is, it is the democratic method of making and unmaking laws, and establishing a parallel, and profoundly unrepresentative, process in which laws are rendered of uncertain enforceability doesn’t seem like a good idea.
Juries can and presumably still will from time to time acquit defendants in the teeth of the evidence as a protest, not so much against a specific law, as against the decision of the authorities to enforce the law on a specific occasion. This can often lead to the law being changed. I recall a case from the UK a few years ago – sorry, no cite – in which a civil servant was acquitted of breaching the the Official Secrets Act. On the evidence, he had plainly committed the offence charged, but the jury seemed to feel that his action in making certain information public was very much in the public interest, and that it was wrong of the government to have kept the information confidential, and even of them wronger to prosecute the man involved. So they acquitted him.
This is possible in the UK (and Ireland) because (a) juries don’t give reasons for their verdict, and (b) the prosecution cannot normally appeal against an acquittal. Is the same true in the US?
I don’t believe the amendment is having juries erase a law or rewrite it. They would only be considering if the violation, which has been admitted, should be subject to penalty in a particular case.
The question is not whether one might occassionally get a jury “dumber than rocks”, but rather would the jury be dumber than the legislature that wrote the law and the prosecutor who brought the case.
IMO, it’s arrogant to believe wisdom and common sense are the monopoly of those with law degrees or those who have obtained high office primarily thru large financial contributions from special interests.
So-called “patriot/sovereign citizen” tax protestor groups first tried to bring Jury Nullification to the public’s attention about a decade or so ago, via a publication called The Citizens Rule Book. (Note that it’s spelled “Citizens”, not “Citizen’s”.)
The full text of The Citizens Rule Book can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/rulebook.html. This 62-page booklet (now in its 4th Edition) is liberally [sic] sprinkled with strong religious sentiments designed to appeal to conservative Christians.
Incidentally, a South Dakota organization formerly known as Justice Unlimited is now calling itself Common Sense Justice for South Dakotans and is strongly pushing for Measure A. I wonder if the old Justice Unlimited organization had anything to do with putting Measure A on the ballot in the first place…
Wisdom and Common sense may or may not (I say they do) belong to those with eduction and the natural wit to make use of it, but nevertheless, you are by nature getting people who know little of the law, are often uneducated (trial lawyers love getting such people), and are more likely to be swayed by emotion than legislatures, who debate and consider and politic.
So, two people committ the same act, and then both try to get the jury to nullify the verdict. One is successful, one is not. What about the idea that we are a nation of laws, not of men? What about the idea that all people are equal before the law? This nullification scheme just introduces inequalities into an allready difficult situation.
Czarcasm nailed it in one post. Instructing the jurors that they may ignore the law if they decide it is unjust would likely result in many miscarriages of justice when a particular defendant appeals to the prejudices of any one of those jurors. Do we really want to let, for instance, a gay-basher walk away from legitimate assault charges because one jerk on the jury thinks the victim deserved it?
Bandit
Our difference in opinion on this particular issue seems to be based upon a more fundamental difference.
We don’t now impose educational or IQ requirements upon our juries and usually prohibit the most learned in the law from being on the jury – lawyers and judges. For better or worse, that’s the way it is. You seem to be implying you wish this to change.
Where we must differ, is that I think one’s intelligence and education does not necessarily say anything about one’s common sense or sense of justice, which seem to be the more highly desired qualities for jurors.
But the problem isn’t (as I see it) a lack of common sense or intelligence, but rather that different juries have a different sense of justice.
Suppose that two individuals have both been charged with aggravated mopery on the same evidence, and are at separate trials. The evidence against each one is overwhelming; the prosecutor barely has to work to convincingly prove each element in the offense. However, the first guy’s jury doesn’t think mopery ought to be a crime, so he goes free. The second jury doesn’t like mopery, or just decides that the prosecution made its case, convicts the second defendant, and he goes to jail for 20 years. How is this result fair? The problem with allowing the jury to decide this in individual cases is that it’s inconsistent and leads to uneven results, making the case more about the defendant (does D deserve to go to jail?) than about the defendant’s actions (did D do x, y, and z?).
Also, some of the occasions in which jury nullification has been seen in practice are pretty ugly – imagine trying to convict a white man of murdering a black man in 1920s South Carolina. Or consider a defendant accused of gay-bashing who has Fred Phelps in his jury box. For the laws to be fair they must be administered equally – and I say this as a person who’d very much like to get rid of many laws.
I’d prefer having people who have done nothing wrong go free over a fair justice system that punishes everyone. There is the problem with letting people in a prejudiced area go free, but I think that it would be better to both let the person who has done nothing wrong and the person who did do something wrong go free rather than send them both to jail.
FIJA has a few things to say about jury nullification in their FAQ.
We had a thread from last August where quite a few people came out in favor of jury nullification.
Are there any limits on the types of cases this new jury power can be used for? I wouldn’t mind letting juries acquit people who commit victimless crimes, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to extend that to violent crime, theft, etc.
I was once one of those rock dumb jurors.
A black man driving a borrowed car through a white neighborhood gets stopped by the Orlando Police for “not coming to a full and complete stop” at a stop sign, a charge the defendant denies. The cops decide he is in the wrong place and ask if they can search his car. If he refuses, they get a warrant, so he lets them. They find a crack pipe in the console with residue. He denies any knowlege of the pipe and later tests negative for cocaine in his system. He is charged with cocaine possession. I hung the jury. I am proud of that. He was stopped for driving while black. Justice was served. I sleep well.