I belong to an onling gov’t simulation as well, and we once had a major blow-out there over jury nullification. Some people think it’s bad bad bad, and some of us (still) don’t see the problem.
What’s the history of this? Does it exist outside the US? Aside from a possible belief that judges would be on Uncle Sam’s side in a dispute, why else do we have juries?
And just for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Jury Nullification is when you are on a jury and believe the defendent to be guilty, but vote that he’s not guilty anyway, generally because you don’t believe the crime he has committed was wrong.
Historical cases that I know of; On several occassions white men would actually be brought to trial for lynching blacks in the South, and all white jury, even when presented with irrefutable evidence, would not convict. There was a fairly recent one where a woman killed her abusive husband, and jury wouldn’t convict her, despite evidence.
Now, of course the anti-Nullification crowd always holds up those white men who lynched blacks and got away with it as examples of why it’s a bad practice, but living in the South my whole life, I can honestly tell you, it was better for everyone around not to convict those men. Ok, I can see people starting to get angry, let me finish; Look at the big picture. Let’s say the white men were convicted, and go to jail for killing a black man. Are all their white buddies and relatives happy? Nuh-uh. Is the white sheriff happy? Nuh-uh. Are more blacks going to suffer as a result of the conviction? Uh-huh.
Anyway, yeah, weigh in with opinions, historical cases, and I do seriously want to know if this is a phenomenon unique to the USA.
General Questions is a forum for questions which may be answered factually. If you’re seeking opinions, perhaps you should try IMHO. If you’re seeking debate on a proposition, perhaps Great Debates is the right approach, although, as Crafter_Man notes, it has been discussed before at great length.
The factual answer to your question is that if a jury’s verdict is used in any meaningful way in any legal system, the possibility of jury nullification exists. This is not limited to the United States.
Well, I for one, didn’t see the original thread. Besides, maybe there are people who’d like to participate in a discussion on this who weren’t in on the previous thread. Although it is better suited for the Great Debates forum.
As for jury nullification, I’m all for it. What better way to send a message to the gov’t that a law is unjust. Recently nullification has been used as a way to say “enough is enough” when it comes to the war on drugs. In Washington DC, the black residents were so sick of seeing their young men get sent to prison for crack, that they started aquitting people on drug cases in droves. This is the type of action that makes the practice of jury nullification true justice.
Sorry, but your argument is absolutely ridiculous. So we shouldn’t convict violent white racists* because we might get them mad??* Don’t you think that by letting people like this off, we’re sending the message that racial crimes are OK? Wouldn’t this, in fact, incite more violence against minorities???
In the pre-integration south? Yeah, you were better off not convicting the racists. Nowadays equal protection under the law at least gets lip service in the justice system.
As far as not messing with them cuz you might get them mad; Yeah, exactly. You shouldn’t make the Judge, Sheriff, City Council, your neighbors, etc, mad.
The outright hegemony whites were granted under segregation prevented even worse atrocities. Reconstruction betrayed Southern Blacks by pulling out before anything had really changed.
There’s an organization called the Fully Informed Jury Association. Their website is www.fija.org. They’re pushing for a constitutional amendment to require the judge, in every jury trial, to INSTRUCT the jury that they have the right and power to judge the law as well as the facts. No one can deny that juries have an effective power of “nullification,” at least under circumstances where their motives cannot be inquired into, which covers most cases. But FIJA’s position is that the possibility of jury nullification is not just a practically inevitable result of the jury system, it is a right, a fundamental part of the system under common law. I’m a lawyer but I haven’t looked closely at their supporting legal research, so I reserve judgment on that point. Check out FIJA’s website and it will probably answer most questions you have about the idea. Some it doesn’t answer.
So far as I can tell, the only purpose of a “fully informed jury” is to make it harder to convict criminal defendants in cases where either the defendant’s case is particularly sympathetic, or where the law allegedly violated is a very controversial one opposed by a significant minority of the people, e.g., the laws against marijuana possession (or, in the South from Reconstruction to the 1950s, the laws that made killing a black person a crime to rank with killing a white person). In the latter case, what the FIJA activists want is not to give the juries “veto” power over the law – a president or governor can veto legislation and it never becomes legislation, but if a jury acquits a marijuana dealer, marijuana is still illegal and the same situation can come up again and again. What they want is to give ANY MEMBER of a randomly selected panel of 6 or 12 citizens the authority to block the application of any particular law in any specific instance. As noted, that does not stop the D.A. or State Attorney from seeking to a convict another defendant under the same law in a different instance, but it does give him or her reason to stop and think; who wants to waste all that effort building a case if there’s a good chance the jury will acquit despite the law? Obviously, a Fully Informed Jury Amendment (or even a state of affairs where the idea is so widely known that every potential juror “knows” he or she has the nullification power) would make it harder for the state to enforce laws which were duly enacted through the constitutional political process but which are fiercely opposed by a significant minority of the population – a description which covers a lot of laws, and always has. Equally obviously, this is at bottom a libertarian position – the idea that majority support is not enough; a law that restricts personal freedom of action in any way should be in force only if practically the whole community supports it. That’s an idea that would require a whole new thread to discuss in the depth it merits. Even if defensible, it definitely is NOT one of the assumptions on which our political and legal systems are based. (There’s a libertarian slogan: “Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” Clever but dishonest. Democracy is four sheep and a wolf voting on what to have for dinner. In real life the sheep outnumber the wolves and democracy is the only defense they’ve got. But I digress.)
But, fine, FIJA would make it harder for state attorneys to win convictions under controversial laws. (And in sympathetic cases.) That’s clear enough, but it raises some questions which I haven’t seen addressed anywhere in their literature:
Are there any circumstances where it could work the other way? Can we conceive of criminal cases where an “uninformed” jury would vote to acquit but a “fully informed” jury would vote to convict?
The criminal courts are only half the justice system. Does jury nullification have any application in civil lawsuits? If so, how would it apply? Would it be more plaintiff-friendly or defendant-friendly in its operation?
As pointed out above, potential jurors, before they are seated on a jury, are always examined by both prosecution and defense counsel (or plaintiffs’ and defense counsel) in that particular case, a process called “voir dire.” Under the rules of voir dire, counsel are allowed to ask the potential juror any questions they think are relevant to the juror’s predisposition in this case (the other side can always object). They might ask about your work history, educational level, marital status, family life, political views – anything that sheds light on what kind of person you are, and on where your sympathies might lie in this case. Each attorney gets a limited number of “peremptory challenges,” meaning the right to dismiss a candidate without explaining why. Each attorney also gets an unlimited number of “for cause” challenges, meaning he or she can make an argument as to why this person cannot be an unbiased juror in this case, and if the judge agrees, the potential juror is dismissed. Now, obviously, if we adopt the Fully Informed Jury Amendment without changing the voir dire system, the amendment wouldn’t mean much; the state attorney would simply have to ask every potential juror his or her opinion regarding the law or laws in question, and dismiss-for-cause all who do not support that law. So, is the FIJ Amendment really a complete reform, if it is enacted without including provisions that would eliminate the voir dire system, or fundamentally change its rules?
Well, the OP was wondering about the history of jury nullification, which is a GQ. (He also threw in some GD statements, also)
It looks like the first well known example of nullification in America was the Zenger trial, where a newspaper printer was accused of libel of the colonial governor. I think there had been some well known cases in England before then, though.