I’ve never been on a jury before. I don’t really know how it works. So I’m wondering, what if you’re on a jury for a trial and disagree with the law for which the defendant is on trial so you vote innocent even if he’s obviously guilty? I would think this would happen often if possible but I don’t know what could prevent it.
Depending on the type of trial, you will probably, before the trial, during jury selection, be told what type of law was allegedly broken. The judge will ask you if you have any profound disagreements with the law in question, and will kick you out if you say you do and s/he believes you.
If you disagree with a law, and you still make it onto the jury, you can still find the defendant innocent regardless of his/her apparent guilt through the process of jury nullification. Everybody frowns on jury nullification, for many reasons, but the Supreme Court has found that it is an essential part of a fair trial, so it remains.
I’ve often heard on our news in Chicago, how jurors have been replaced with alternates for failure to negotiate or failing to be truthful to the selection process. In one case the person indicated he had no problem with the death pentalty but in deliberations said that he wouldn’t find for the death penalty and the other jurors reported him and he was replaced with an alternate, because he lied in the screening process.
Of course I imagine stuff like that will be used for an appeal but it shows, if you’re gonna be sneaky about it, you need to be sneaky till AFTER the trail ends.
So if just one person who disagrees with the law makes it to the jury (perhaps by lying to the judge) and judges the defendant innocent, that would result in a deadlocked jury thus nullifying the law in the case, right?
No. A hung jury almost always leads to a new trial.
Only if a guilty verdict requires a unanimous vote. I think there are plenty of situations where smaller percentages suffice.
One vote for acquittal will not result in the defendant being declared not guilty. Nullification occurs when a jury lets a defendant off despite the weight of the evidence against the defendant. A hung jury (say 11-1 for guilty) will likely result in a mistrial and almost surely a new trial with another jury.
Jury nullification is… tricky. We want jurors to follow the instructions of the court on the law, but we also don’t want them to check their brains at the door. We want them to follow the law, but we also want them to do justice. In very, very rare cases, jury nullification might be the least bad solution to a particularly tough case, but I haven’t seen one yet.
Jury nullification has a somewhat honorable history in America, particularly during British rule when doughty colonists would resist overbearing Crown judges who were essentially telling them that the law required that they convict this or that fellow colonist, or when pre-Civil War juries acquitted abolitionists charged with violations of the immoral, unjust Fugitive Slave Act. More recently, however, those most in favor of jury nullification are folks about whom I’ll admit I’m a bit leery: tax protesters, anti-government/survivalist types, gang-sympathetic urban activists and anti-drug-law zealots. An overgeneralization, sure, but that’s what I’ve seen. If the law is to be changed because it’s wrong or overly harsh, it ought to be changed by elected legislators, and not by a group of strangers thrown together for a few days in a local courthouse.
Of course a prospective juror, having sworn an oath or affirmation, must be scrupulously truthful during voir dire; both the prosecution and the defense are entitled to a fair and impartial jury. Perjuring yourself or deceptively keeping mum so that you can stick it to The Man once seated on a jury is both illegal and just plain wrong. You wouldn’t want a juror with a hidden agenda hearing your case; you shouldn’t be that juror in someone else’s case.
Things also depend upon which court you’re in. Here in California, during the jury selection process (voir dire) you must swear, under penalty of perjury, that you will answer all questions truthfully. Further, the California Supreme court has ruled that jurors are required to obey the court’s instructions on the law; they are supposed to judge the facts, not the underlying law or the court’s interpretation of the law (People vs. Williams, S066106).
Well how could nullification ever work if the judge dismisses anyone who has a problem with the law? That seems to assure that it won’t happen.
Really? in criminal cases? I’m only familiar with majority vote verdicts in civil cases, here in Canada. Criminal verdicts must be unanimous. Is it different in the US?