Evil, the general nation wide conviction rate in criminal cases may well be something like 90%, but only when you count a plea as a conviction. Quite frankly, I would be surprised if the over all rate were anything less. Prosecutors win most contested cases too. I would guess, however, that much of the explanation for this is not that juries have no spines, but that good prosecutors only try good cases and important cases and in the others “make an offer (the defendant) cannot refuse.” Remember that most criminal cases are not the stuff of murder mystery novels. Usually the facts are pretty obvious and easily proven.
And what’s wrong with that?
So do yuo have a problem with jury nullification being used to block unconstitutional laws?
I do.
Jury nullification saves only the accused in that case from the unconstitutional law. Much better to let the appellate process work and find the law unconstitutional, which will save ALL from the reach of that law.
Sure, the appelate process is better, but isn’t jury nullification better than nothing?
The origin of jury independence
According to The Law’s Strangest Cases (ISBN 1-86105-463-7), the ability of a jury to disregard the Bench dates to Sept 1670 when William Penn was charged with Unlawful Assembly and the jury, whose foreman was one Edward Bushel, refused to convict.
For the full story see pp 20-23.
False dilemma.
The apellate process judges the constitutionality of the law. If it fails to overnturn the law, then your premise was false: the law is, in fact, constitutional.
Simply because a court has declared a law constitutional, that doesn’t make it so, and denying cert most certainly does not make a law constituional.