This one is a little GQ and a little GD and somewhat esoteric in nature, so please bear with me.
I have heard through several sources (but had little luck in Google verifying) that juries may essentially refuse to hand down a guilty verdict because they think a law is stupid. So, for example, a man can be caught red-handed smoking a joint, the evidence of him doing so videotaped while the Pope whitnessed the whole think, but a jury may decide that they disagree with the War on Drugs, and so refuse to convict.
Part the first, for you legal folks, is this: Can anyone tell me if this is true (as if sounds a bit like Urban Mythology to me)?
Part the second (assuming that the above is legally true) is this: What are the legal/moral implications of this. Is this some strange loophole or is it a check/balance?
Re: the first, yes, this is true. It’s called “jury nullification.” A jury verdict of “not guilty” can’t be overturned by the judge or a subsequent proceeding.
Re: the second…hoo boy. Lots of debate over whether this is proper or not, both on this board and in the legal academic community. I’m sure some of those with strong feelings on both sides of the issue will be along soon.
Without getting too much into it (again), I will say that even those who think jury nullification is just plain wrong generally view it as at the very least a necessary evil. The alternative would be having judges throw out accquitals because the defendant was “obviously guilty” or subjecting people to double jeopardy because the first jury “obviously ignored the law.” This would likely lend itself to much greater abuses than the possibility that the jury engaged in jury nullification does.
Excellent guys! Now that I know the term to look for, it seems that I have a lot of reading to do. I have said this before, and I will say it again SDMB rocks!
Im not from the states so im not sure about this, but i remember
something about a guy who shot 3 muggers many years ago, i think in New York, the judges kept ordering retrials because even though he was obviously guilty the juries passed not guilty verdicts. I may be totaly wrong here, be free to rip me to pieces if i am
I’m not sure if this is happens over here in the UK; I was called up for Jury service a year or so ago and it was emphatically put to us during induction that our job was not to decide whether the accused deserved punishment etc, only whether the charges laid against him are true or false.
Things almost always happen in exactly the same way in the States, too. But very rarely juries will vote their hearts. But it is unusual for a defendant to win that much sympathy and find a jury that willing.
If the jury truly came back with an accquital, he couldn’t have been tried again for the same crime, not legally anyway. It would violate the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against double jeopardy. What might have happened was one or more mistrials were declared because of a procedural error, like a hung jury or a fatally predjudicial statement by the judge, a lawyer, or a witness. Another possibility that just occurred to me is that the judge ordered three separate trials for the three separate shootings to increase the likelihood of at least one of them leading to a guilty verdict.
That was the Bernard Goetz (sp?) case. There were at least 2 trials, each reopened because of procedural matters. One may have also been a Federal case, like with the Rodney King trial, where the officers were acquitted by California, but tried for violating King’s constitutional rights.
While it is rare, it is possible to get past “double jeopardy.” Those who manage it get to be pretty legendary in their region…
The cops in the King case were aquitted in state court of assault, I believe. They were tried in federal court on a different offense, namely violating King’s constitutional rights, as you said.
of Clive Ponting- Obviously guilty but the jury would not convict. Certainly annoyed Maggie Thatcher!
‘Fortunately for Ponting, the prosecution lost the case not because they didn’t have the law on their side but because the jury refused to be browbeaten.’
Over here the defense has no absolute right to argue jury nullification and, in most states, it is impermissable for a defense lawyer to exhort the jury to ignore the facts and nullify, or even to tell the jury that it has to right to nullify. Sometimes activists hand out fliers to people walking in to a courthouse to advise them of the right in case they happen to be jurors.
Some states- not sure of how many, have a “must/should” instruction- e.g. New Hampshire’s Wentworth instruction- “If you beleive that the prosecution has not proved any element of its case, then you must vote to acquit. IF you believe that they have proved all elements of their case beyond a resonable doubt, then you should vote to convict.” I used to use this in criminal cases where I had no hope as a defense lawyer.