I had jury duty today! I know jury nullification is a controversial issue, but my experiences in court today made me even more confused about the subject.
During jury orientation, we were shown a cheesy video about the history of justice, starting with ‘trial by ordeal’ and some earlier types of jury systems. A significant portion of the ‘why juries rock!’ examples were of juries that refused to convict certain historical figures that the prevailing power wanted to make an example of. In essence, while they didn’t use the term, the main message of the video seemed to be that the reason juries are so great is because they can nullify unjust laws.
But then when we met the judge, she made a big point of asking each juror if they were comfortable with the idea of making a determination based solely on her instructions of the law, regardless of how they felt about the law, what their own interpretation of the law was, or what might happen in sentencing.
Presumably, any juror that wasn’t comfortable with this would either be excused, or would be perjuring themselves. So…
What is the actual status of jury nullification? If it’s legal, why is the judge allowed to prevent it? If it’s not legal, could a judge overturn a verdict based on it? If someone said they were comfortable during the jury questioning but then later decided to vote based on their conscience rather than the facts of the case, could they be charged with perjury? This is New York state, but I’m interested in how it varies by state, or if there is a federal precedent of some kind.
If they hate the idea so much as to prevent it, why are they promoting the essence of the idea in the orientation?
Having not seen the video I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that wasn’t the point of the orientation. I suspect they were trying to say that juries have to weigh the evidence presented to them and make a determination on the facts, not the prevailing attitude of the public or the government.
To reiterate what’s been said in many previous threads, jury nullification is extra-legal: juries aren’t supposed to do it, but there is little or no recourse for the prosecution if they do. Jury nullification is based simply on the idea that a jurys’ verdict of Not Guilty cannot be second-guessed by anyone (short of mistrial, jury tampering, etc.) Otherwise the government could simply set aside acquittals and keep retrying until they got a guilty verdict.
Well, they can’t stop you from ignoring the law. It seems like a “get out of jury duty” option though, to say you disagree with the law and nothing will get you off the jury sooner.
The only time I have seen it in action here was over abortion. A doctor was accused, he certainly had violated the law and pleaded medical necessity or some such. The jury refused to convict (unanimously) and so he was acquitted. But Canada has no ban on double jeopardy and the crown (government) appealed. The appeal judge said that the jury should not have been allowed to hear the doctor’s defense since it was irrelevant to the law. He did not order a new a new trial but substituted a “guilty” verdict for the “not guilty”. Although there was apparently no actual bar to his doing that, a higher appeal court ruled that he was entitled to a new trial. He was not allowed to plead his defense and the jury was hung. Obviously there were nullificationists on it. So they tried him again and got another hung jury. Finally, the crown prosecutor gave up, saying they were never going to get a conviction. Eventually, parliament got around to repealing the abortion law, but it was the nullification that did it.
Seems to me the jury system is very much meant to curb the excesses of the crown (so to speak). Changing things at the ballot box is all well and good but that does not help the hundreds or thousands of people who might have their lives ruined by some (hypothetical) unjust law.
For instance I think it is absolutely wrong that the jury cannot know of potential penalties for a given offense. A jury may find factually that a defendant is guilty of urinating in public (behind a tree in a park for instance) but would be hugely reluctant to convict if they find out that a conviction will put the guy on a sex offender registry which would largely ruin his life (and yes that can happen…cite).
I understand the dangers suggested by a jury system where juries just make up law as they feel like that day. Personally my impression is juries are generally good at doing the job set them (or rather they are conscientious about it) and would not willy-nilly nullify laws on a whim.
If our system of self-governance is to mean anything then the people need to be able to self govern and not be tools of the state.
And there is a distinction that has to be made. I have been on many juries over the past 50 years and while I have never been on a jury which voted “Not Guilty” because we thought the law was bad. ie. jury nullification, I have been on a jury which said “This law is a good law, the accused clearly broke the law, but for various reasons we are not going to convict him.” I think this latter situation occurs much more often than true jury nullification.
It also doesn’t help the hundreds or thousands of victims of crimes when biased juries decided to acquit. Think of the all-white juries that acquitted lots of white perpetrators of crime on blacks and outsiders. If you take the alleged good of jury nullification you have to acknowledge the bad as well.
Did the judge or defense in those cases instruct the jury to return a not-guilty verdict regardless of the facts or did the white juries just do that? Does this still occur these days or was it an unfortunate blight in our past?
But as you said, you don’t get to control what goes on in the deliberation room. Can you be sure a jury won’t decide a prostitute “deserved” to be assaulted because they think poorly of her character?
The question is do you think they decided the case based on the evidence (or lack of it) presented to them, or their personal feelings about the accused and the victim?
And to vent a little further, it’s amazing to me how far that one report’s misinformation has spread. We found many sites making the same claim; in almost every case, it was traceable back to the HRW report.
The fact that the laws exist but no one has yet been forced to register doesn’t fill me with a good feeling. It seems like the gun is loaded, cocked (no pun intended) and aimed and that it wouldn’t take much to start seeing it used.
ETA: Until your post, Bricker, I too thought the HRW claim was true. Another iota of ignorance chipped away.
So, if I were on a jury and applied your facts only, don’t judge the law system, I would have to send that kid up there to jail for 17 years for a consensual blowjob.
