My name didn’t get picked from the magic random name picking device, so I’m not on the jury. If it was, I wouldn’t be discussing it here. I’m merely curious about the subject. This isn’t an OP asking for advice on how to be a juror.
I wouldn’t ask you to go into specifics if that’s not appropriate, but could you characterize the kinds of reasons that might occur?
That’s something I’m curious about which is obviously a lynchpin of controlling nullification - are the deliberations observed or recorded in any way?
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole;12764626Fine…I’ll give different examples then:
…
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.
Sorry counselor…I could not knowingly do that.
To me that is a mockery of justice.[/QUOTE]
Hear, hear!
Despite the noblest of intentions, the jury process has devolved into a tool of the government under the system ‘First give him a fair trial, then hang him’. Juries are instructed endlessly to consider a legal case as a hypothetical situation limited in scope by the government. Juries are not required to know what the law is, and if informed, limited to the wording of the specific law only. Knowledge of penalties is prohibited, except where the death sentence applies, and then the juries may be screened to eliminate anyone who would let a death sentence affect their verdict.
The justice system produces proper convictions somewhere between 75% and 95% of the time depending on the point of view of those who measure the wrongful conviction rate. Even at the minimal 5% wrongful conviction rate, over 100,000 people are now being punished unjustly. This does not include those who have been convicted of unjust laws. My cynicism would not be so great if there were any effort to change this situation. Instead, as time passes, the SCOTUS further degrades the rights of the citizenry to be free from the unjust intrusion of their liberty from the government.
That said, the reponsibility of the citizen cannot be discarded either. The comparison of acquittals for pot smokers and murdering Klansmen is a weak analogy. Jurors who acquit pot smokers do so on the basis of the law itself. The acquittal of lynchers was not based on the law against murder, but on the jurors perception of the victim, and the government itself. Citizens should know and understand the law, and it’s consequences, and jury nullification should be reserved to stop injustice, not punish victims or the government, or reward the accused.
And here’s where I debunked that claim. Note, by the way, the fact that he’s been convicted twice for “open and gross lewdness” acts. So, no, there was more to Matamoros’ conviction than simple public urination.
From your cited article:
Now, your refusal to convict might well have spared Limon some discomfort. But it also would have prevented the Supreme Court from ruling on the issue and settling the law for EVERYONE in Kansas, and indeed in the whole country.
Nice going.
[quote=“jackdavinci, post:22, topic:549119”]
I wouldn’t ask you to go into specifics if that’s not appropriate, but could you characterize the kinds of reasons that might occur?,
I’ll try to be brief. Both prosecution and defense agreed on all the facts. A U.S. Government security officer who wore a uniform and carried a gun while at work had an after hours job as a cashier in a supermarket. On the day in question after his government job was finished he changed into his civilian clothes, went to the supermarket, put his gun in the store safe, and went to work at the cash register. A few minutes later the store manager came to him and said “Two guys have been casing the store. I think they are going to rob us. I’ve called the cops, but in the meantime would you get your gun and be ready for them?” He got his gun and a few minutes later two men barged into the store, one with a pistol and one with a shotgun and said “This is a hold-up.” The clerk raised his gun, said he was a cop, and told the men to drop their weapons. The man with the pistol then fired at the clerk hitting him in the shoulder. The clerk did not fire his own weapon, but jumped over the counter and said again “I am a cop, drop you weaspons.” The man with the pistol dropped it and raised his hands. The man with the shotgun ran to the back of the store. The clerk, bleeding from his shoulder, picked up the bad guy’s gun, gave it to the store manager, and said “Guard him until W the police get here. I’m going after the other one.” He ran to the back of the store only to find the second robber had gotten out a back door. He then returned to the front of the store to find the cops had arrived and taken the first robber into custody. THE CLERK WAS THEN ARRESTED FOR CARRYING A GUN WHEN HE WASN’T AUTHORIZED TO DO SO! He was only authorized to carry his gun when he was on duty as a security guard. I was on the jury at his trial. We , the jurors, decided that that case never should have been brought. There was no way we were going to convict him He should have gotten a medal! We found him “Not Guilty”. The judge was furioius.
The deficiency here is that the accused could not assert necessity as a positive defense. He did not use the gun in an unauthorized manner save for the necessary defense of life and liberty. Jury nullification should not have even been a factor. In this case, clearly, the judge and the prosecutor, were, like the law, an ass.
Kudos for your practise of justice.
Looks like the law was settled under Lawrence. Kansas needed to prosecute someone under this for a higher court to point them to the Lawrence decision which they should have been aware of?
Further, I could not and would not send a kid to jail for 17 years fora BJ on the hope someone will appeal it and that a higher court might overrule the conviction so that Kansas could get its head out of its ass.
How many years did the kid sit in jail till this was sorted out? How long did he have to ponder being incarcerated for 17 years? How was his experience in prison around other criminals…that improve him?
Try again.
This was one of the juries featured in the orientation video!
Not really.
Limon was convicted and his appeal denied by the Kansas Court of Appeals in 2002. Lawrence wasn’t decided until 2003; indeed, the Kansas court relied primarily on Bowers v. Hardwick, the same law that Lawrence overturned. (State v. Limon, Case No. 85,898, unpublished opinion of 2/1/2002).
The Kansas Supreme Court declined to review his case. Limon then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which waited until it had issued Lawrence and then kicked Limon’s case back to Kansas for them to decide it it light of Lawrence.
The Kansas Court of Appeals again affirmed Limon’s conviction, saying that Lawrence limited its holding to adults, and this case did not involve adults. Limon appealed once again to the Kansas Supreme Court, and that court reversed the conviction, saying that after their “… search for a rational basis for the harshly disparate sentencing treatment of those 18 years old and younger who engage in voluntary sex with an underage teenager of the same sex,” they could find none.
And so they said:
(emphasis mine)
It’s not as simple as, “Oh, they should have looked at Lawrence.” Courts don’t go out and review all their states’ laws every time a new decision comes down. They can generally only review (and strike) unconstitutional laws in the context of a case in front of them.
I recognize that this leaves a juror in a hard place. But just like a defense attorney who advocates vigorously for a client he knows is factually guilty, a juror’s job is to keep the judicial system working. It’s what you agree to do when you become a juror… and not just “agree,” but take an oath to do.
And that oath is given for the reason that your action help ensure that laws get applied fairly for EVERYONE – not just the single defendant that is lucky enough to have you on his jury.
So, as a juror on the Limon case I would have zero reasonable expectation that all the above would happen and be left with the notion that the kid is simply getting sent to prison for 17 years for a BJ. You suggest I would have subverted the process because without putting the kid in jail we could not get to the law ultimately getting overturned.
I guess I object to what seems a priestly notion that you listen to the priests (lawyers in this case); they know better, do not ask “why” and just accept that some people need to be sacrificed on the altar of justice from time to time so the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of their suffering.
I realize that justice often grows out of injustices but I flatly reject that we should be ok with injustice because it might produce a better world in the future. It seems fundamentally flawed to me to think I should perpetrate a great injustice in the hopes it’ll get sorted out later and be even better. What about the kid? If it were you on the chopping block (so to speak) would you be philosophical about all this and ok with it? After your initial conviction would you be optimistic about getting the Supreme Court to overturn your case? Would you be ok rotting in jail for several years during all this? I am betting you wouldn’t (nor should you be).
Yeah…nice oath and I am not sure I could take it. The vast majority of times I would abide by it but in some cases such as listed in this thread I could not.
So, do as the state says. To me that is entirely at odds with the notion of a jury of your peers which is supposed to be a curb on the state. Now the state co-opts the jurors…neat trick.
And if you think there is equal justice for “EVERYONE” then I have a bridge to sell you. I am nearly positive you are not that naive. It is a nice theory but one utterly absent in our judicial system.
There was an article about use of marijuana for medical purposes in California and other places. Although this still violates federal law, the feds are not prosecuting because no matter how firmly the judge insists that may consider neither the fact that the use is medical nor that it is accordance with state law, there is no jury in many jurisdictions in California will convict. That seems like pure nullification to me. In fact the federal government has now formally announced that it will not prosecute such cases.
I never understood how that worked.
That it happens I don’t deny but how can the person responsible for enforcing the laws say they will not enforce the law?
Mind you I am happy they will not enforce that law but, again, how can they do that?
Generally these things don’t happen willy nilly. If the relevant civil rights organization thinks the climate is ripe for change, they will either wait for the right test case and give the defendant full opportunity to volunteer themselves, or in some cases even find willing moral dissenters / passive resisters to openly test a law by breaking it on purpose. And it’s usually well publicized. So whatever the justifications might be for or against jury nullification, screwing up a test case isn’t one of them.
This supposes Limon was a test case.
My read is he was some poor schlub who got screwed by the system.
If I know you are intentionally subjecting yourself to the system to challenge a law then fine.
If I have no clue of that and am expected to vote on sending a guy to jail for 17 years for a consensual blowjob then no…I will not vote that way.
Would you?
It could be argued that something very lijke jury nullification is provided for in the law itself, in the “accusatory adverbs” used in the statutory definitions of crimes and in the accusatory instruments charging someone with those crimes. “A person is guilty of mopery in the second degree if he intentionally, criminally, willfully, and feloniously …” (Specific adverbs vary by jurisdiction, IIRC.) Those adverbs are in there to make the mens rea a required element of the crime, to require that for guilt to attach, the accused mus have committed some action that constitutes a criminal act with intent to take that action, whether or not he intended to break the law or to have the consequences of his actions happen.
The jury can agree that the accused did in fact commit the actions described in the charge, but find that he did not do it criminally or feloniously.
I live in New York, and a case like that happened a couple of counties over from me. An old guy was aquitted of murdering his brother, even though the facts of the case that came out at trial lead everyone to expect conviction. Essentially it was a case of his brother being too old and decrepit to whack himself, but still of sufficiently sound mind to ask his brother to do it for him. So he did. The jury apparently decided to aquit in the interests of justice. Everyone (the public) expected conviction, but were mostly of the opinion that that would be unjust. My guess was that the jury felt the same way.
It was too long ago for me to remember enough details to find a cite in a timely manner, but if you want to google it, I think it was in Seneca county. I may be wrong.
Maybe I am misunderstand your point, but your argument convinces me that “keeping the judicial system working” means that the jury should refuse to convict if the law is unjust. The judicial system will eventually throw out the unjust law, but juries are given the means to do so as well.
I think this is the interesting part of the OP question.
Suppose the judge gives you directions which are simply wrong and you know it.
If you answer “No,” you don’t get called. If you answer, “yes” and ignore her instructions, you’re up for perjury.
And judging by the number of reversals judges instructions can be wrong.
The real issue is Americans are taught trials are about justice, while lawyers and police and such are not taught that.
A police officer will say, my job is to get the clues and make the arrest based on that informtion of who “is likely” to be guilty
It’s up to the justice system to convict or release them
A DA will say, “when I’m brought a case,” it’s my job to win it not to seek out whether to guy is really innocent or guilty. Thus the problem of having a good prosecutor and a poor defence attorney.
Both the court and the police will say “It’s the grand jury’s decision to indict” But being on a grand jury is a thankless, low paid job that means the people on them are often not the best candidates to be on them, and thus make a poor way to produce quality indictments.
And none of my statements are meant as a rap. It’s just how it is. You see we have a system set up to blame everyone else, when something goes wrong, and never to look inward when an error occurs.
For instance if a judge says “follow my directions” and then her cases are overturned because of wrong instructions. How many times should this happen before she should be removed.
And what about others. If the judge issues bad directions and one of her cases is reversed and the guy goes free, sure that MAY open a way for others found guilty to reopen their cases, but it MAY NOT. And that’s the problem. And even if it does allow reopening, can the person afford to do so? Will a person in prison have the means to get that help to reopen it.
But if we allow automatic reopening of cases, won’t that overload the system? Of course it will, but should a person remain in prison just because it’s inconvenient to find out the truth?
Those all are valid question. And I have no answers to them. But it’d be interesting to talk about.
Finally as the perjury thing goes, yes you could agree with the judge then do you own thing. And that may be perjury…
But as the great Bea Smith (of Prisoner: Cell Block H) said…
Vera) I KNOW you did this Smith
Bea) Yeah well knowing it and proving it are two different things
Actually, IIRC, the liberal governing in Quebec were replaced by the PQ (Separatists) at that point, who were more progressive and recognized the writing on the wall and gave up trying to convict Dr. Morgentaler.