Jury nullification is an affront to democratic government and equality under the law.
As other posters have pointed out, it was nullification that set free those who visited violence on civil rights workers in the 1950s and 60s. Jury nullification is what allowed Byron de la Beckwith, the Klansman who killed Medgar Evers, to remain free for 30 years.
If the laws are wrong, the answer is to change the laws, not to impose ad-hoc “justice.”
South Dakota doesn’t even have to pass that law. Juries already have the right to vote their conscious. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association)?
Once upon a time trial judges would tell jurors about their rights to both judge the law and the facts of the case. Nowadays, some judges still make the juries fully aware of this, but not all. John Adams, our second president said: It is not only his right, but his duty…to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
Some judges and lawyers don’t want juries to know their rights. They would rather have that power to themselves. They think that the law is absolute, and despite of a bad law, that is what it says, and you have to make your decision based on that. And as strange as it seems, even some judges are not aware of the juror’s rights. When jurors won’t indict somebody on what they think is a bad law, they will quit enforcing such nonsense. The jury’s power to reject bad laws continues to be recognized by the courts. In 1972 the D.C. Circuit court of Appeals held that a jury has:
*…unreviewable and irreversible power…to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge. The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law. *
I’m sure everyone has heard of some of the most asinine and archaic laws that are still on the books. How would anyone like it, if they enforced these laws to the letter?
I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d certainly concede that your knowledge of criminal law is pretty poor. To wit:
Wrong. First of all, they don’t even need a search warrant. Innumerable Supreme Court opinions have made it perfectly clear that the police only need probable cause to search an automobile–a search warrant is simply not necessary. See, e.g., California v. Acevedo. 500 U.S. 565 (1991).
Second of all, refusal to consent to a search cannot even be considered a factor in the assessment of probable cause. I don’t have my criminal procedure materials handy right now, though, so you’ll just have to trust me on that without a cite.
Dumb move. Never, never, never, ever consent. Fuck them. And if you consent, it’s your own damn fault when . . .
See? That’s what happens when you consent to a search.
Uh, yeah, and you divined that he was stopped for being black how, precisely? I mean, since the legality of the stop would almost necessarily have been a question for the judge to resolve before any trial took place, why is it that you’re in a superior position to determine what happened, when you weren’t even presented any evidence enabling you to determine jack squat about the circumstances of that stop and the cop’s subjective motives?
Bolding mine.
Uh, I don’t want to rain on your parade here, but isn’t the point of jury nullification that the defendant admitts what they did and then asks the jury not to convict because the law they admit breaking is a ‘bad’ law? What you did is not at all the same thing.
It’s possible that I simply don’t understand the judicial system sufficiently, but I don’t think that juries are actually forced to apply current law. I was under the impression that this was one of the intended purposes of juries (as when the British couldn’t get the colonials to find smugglers guilty).
What actually prevents juries from returning whatever decision they wish?
Cite, please? And make it a legal cite, not some unsupported assertion from the loons at FIJA.
In fact, it is virtually indisputable law that judges DO NOT tell the jury they can disregard the law on which they are instructed. If you have examples to the contrary, please provide them.
Unlike the FIJA types from which you undoubtedly took this out-of-context quote, I have actually read the case to which you’re referring: U.S. v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113 (D.C. Cir. 1972). Of course, the dishonest tactic of the nutballs at FIJA is to quote the same happy little language (not a “holding”) you did, but ignore its explicit holding that the jury is NOT to be instructed that it can reject the law if if disagrees with it. If you want to quote Dougherty, the honest thing to do would be to use some of these quotes, which actually and fairly represent the proposition for which it stands:
The term seems to have been corrupted of late for use in cases of justification. For example, that Law & Order episode where the defendants were dead to rights for murdering a bank guard but argued that they needed the money to finance a justified revolution or somesuch. In more serious political texts, the idea seems to be that the law is struck from the books if nullified, thus eliminating problems such as JN being used selectively to discriminate in favor of white defendants.
Um… I’m with the judges and lawyers on this one. It’s not a question of monopolizing the qualities necessary for a judgement, but about the Law being the Law and not how some random sample of citizenry feels on a particular day.
Anyway, under the new method, you would now not just have the people with the better lawyers getting off, you’ll have the people with the better lawyers making the law as they go along. Johny Cochran, supreme legislator? Nullification isn’t only about letting off one guy, it’s about finding the law itself wanting.
As per minty’s analysis of the self-reported case of pseudo-nullification in this thread (not really nullification, since the guy was arguing his innocence – no problem with the decision to hang the jury if you really believe he was being railroaded), a lot of the time the jurors will be under the impression that they "know better"when they really don’t, maybe because a key piece of info was accepted too eagerly, readily (as in the last post by Vorlon…Aide. Maybe judges are not “legally required to inform the juries that this is so”… 'cause it actually isn’t??)
I am nearly physically ill about it, but I have to agree with December on this one. There is, however, some suspicion that our friend’s post was a ploy to sucker the reasonable and thinking into getting in the same boat with him. I am sure reasonable men will regret this unholy alliance sometime.
Jury nullification agitation, in my experience, does not occur in a vacuum. Agitation for JN does not arise from some philosophy of jurisprudence. Rather, in my experience, the proponents of JN have a specific goal in mind. In Iowa some ten years ago or so the goal was to decriminalize trespass at abortion clinics and the harassment of their staff and patients. Who knows what it may be in South Dakota? At its base the justification relies on the “every man his own priest” idea extended to say every man his own legislature. Because of the general requirement for a unanimous verdict in criminal cases one juror deciding that he knows what is good for or needed by the whole community better than the elected legislature has it in his power to prevent a conviction. Of course one perverse juror could hang a jury despite having pledged himself to apply the law as the trial judge instructs. The JN types recognize that they have a better chance of getting a maverick juror if the judge is required to actually tell the jury panel that the law is whatever the jury wants to think it ought to be and that the jurors are not required to pay any attention to whatever the judge might tell them the law is.
There is, however, an aspect to this thing more dangerous that the possibility that people who have openly done things prohibited by the criminal statutes will be acquitted because a jury does not like the statute. That danger is that people who have not been shown to have done a prohibited act will be convicted because a jury decides that the defendant is a person they want to see in jail, or run out of town, or killed, no mater what the state of the evidence might be.
Let me suggest that there is a way to implement jury nullification in a little more dramatic fashion. Let’s have peoples courts where we just run the whole population into the local high school football stadium, run as many criminal defendants in as we happen to have at the time and decide their guilt, as individuals or as a group, by applause measured on one of those applause meters that were used on the Queen for a Day show. This would give us complete popular control of the bottom tier of the process without any trouble and fuss with fancy stuff like judges and the consistent and predictable application of the law. Why even bother to have law. Let the law be whatever the crowd in the bleachers wants it to be at any given moment. Maybe there can be cheer leaders to induce the crowd/jury to chant its verdict in unison.
We already have de facto jury nullification, the question is whether it should be enshrined in law – probably not. But why bother having juries at all if they are not at least a check against unreasonable laws? Bingo.
First of all, they don’t even need a search warrant. Innumerable Supreme Court opinions have made it perfectly clear that the police only need probable cause to search an automobile–a search warrant is simply not necessary.
Yes, and we all know a black guy driving in a white neighborhood, well, that’s probable cause to search his car!
We already have de facto jury nullification, the question is whether it should be enshrined in law – probably not. But why bother having juries at all if they are not at least a check against unreasonable laws? Bingo.
First of all, they don’t even need a search warrant. Innumerable Supreme Court opinions have made it perfectly clear that the police only need probable cause to search an automobile–a search warrant is simply not necessary.
Yes, and we all know a black guy driving in a white neighborhood, well, that’s probable cause to search his car!
The Measure is specifically designed for juries that are NOT intelligent. Jury nullification is already possible. The jury simply votes as they want and they don’t have to rationalize their vote to anyone.
The Measure would allow a defendant to publicly argue in favor of nullification. This is only necessary for not-so-intelligent juries that don’t already realize they can disreguard the law if it is in the interest of their own sense of justice.
I’m curious if those people who are pro-jury nullification only favor it when a person is acquitten in the interest of justice, or would also favor it when a person is sentenced in the interest of justice.
For example, a person may not break any law, but may be dangerous to society. The jury can find them guilty disreguarding the fact that they didn’t break the law.
I wonder if the Measure A in question allows this. Can a prosecutor argue that although the defendent didn’t break the law because of some technicality, he’s a bad person and the jury should ignore the law and find him guilty?
U.S. v Doughtery, is not an out-of-context quote. One simply can do a google search engine to realize this is the court decision that acknowledges that juries do have a right to nullify a law. You want to make an argument by stating that the jury does not have to be instructed of this though. I’m more than aware that while jurors have the right to nullify the laws, there is no law that says they should be aware of this right. This is also acknowledged by prior cases including United States v. Moylan although you limited your quote to what a Judge Sobeloff thought of it. And although we as jurors have that right, it’s ironic that they do not want us to know our rights. Some judges and lawyers prefer jurors to be ignorant of the law, all the while claiming ignorance of the law is no excuse.
This 1969 case of United States v. Moylan was a United States Court of Appeals for the District of Maryland, and you wanted to voice a Judge Sobeloff’s concern, but you conveniently ignored that it helps compliment U.S. vs Doughtery. Here is a pertinent part that you never addressed:
**“We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic of passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.” (US vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (1969)). **
Now with your long quotes that you give it’s the same ole song and dance about how this is going to cause anarchy and chaos if jurors were fully aware of what is already their right. If this was really true, I would think there would be an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence to quote from if this was indeed the case in some States in which they already let the juror know ALL of their rights. Even in States in which they don’t make the juror’s aware of their rights, many are educated enough to know that they can nullify any law they seem unfit. Again, where is all of the empirical evidence that shows that it leads to chaos?
Another important court case that also gets quoted a lot is the 1895 Supreme Court decision in Sparf vs US (156 US 51), that also ruled that juries have the right to ignore the judge’s instructions. What it didn’t do, like the others mentioned is have it rule that the juror’s had the right to know this though.
In one of the earliest cases with the State of Georgia vs. Brailsford (3 Dall 1), in the Supreme Court on February of 1794 we have a Chief Justice John Jay stating: * “It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision.” (emphasis added) “…you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy”. *
All FIJA wants to do is to make it a law of letting jurors know what all of their rights are. You call them loons for I suppose them wanting to let jurors know this important right. You know, one can make allegations all the day long until the cows come home about how one is dishonest, and one is taking something out of context, and accuse some groups of being loons. It is another to demonstrate it.
All of these quotes I got from doing a Google Search engine. I didn’t have time to get addresses for all of them. But anyone can judge for themselves by doing their own searches.
—Are you so sure that giving juries effective lawmaking power will somehow be a better idea than experienced judges (or even studied political appointees)?—
Only blind worship of government could ever convince someone that judges or politicians’ friends are any more qualified to judge the rightness or wrongness of anything concerning justice. They are specially qualified to judge law (which I sincerely believe is so convoluted precisesly so as to empower themselves and lawyers), not anything else.
I’ll never forget the fact that Judge Judy (now of Tv fame) was once the judge presiding over the New York family court. When a small non-profit came to her to ask if they could set up an informational booth in the court building to help inform people of how the complex and confusing family court system works (things like what “part 34” means, and where to find the various courtrooms they have been summoned to appear in), Judge Judy responded: “The only thing these people need to know about is how to use birth control.” End of interview.
Judges are very often incredibly, unbelievably self-righetous, given their largely unchecked positions of power. Almost to a T, they think that their position makes them MORAL experts as well as legal experts: people who are specially privaleged to hand down personal opinions and condemnations as a final word. They have, however, no such special expertise or rights.
This is just another attempt by Bob Newland to ease penalties for (or legalize) marijuana use, which as any local (and Bob himself) will tell you, is his goal. He’s also been trying to get the state to allow farmers to grow hemp. He’s now the Libertarian party candidate for the position of State Attorney General.
While he does sometimes do things that one might consider loony, such as planting hemp seeds in front of a courthouse with the sheriff in attendance, he’s pretty cool, in a colorful sort of way.