Sure fire way to avoid serving on a Jury?

[Stuffy]

*Originally posted by capacitor *
**I read about other tales of jury nullification–the Scottsboro boys, the murder of Medgar Evans, and so on. Just so you know, jury nullification can work both ways. **

Yeah I remembered those instances too. However you can’t let ignorance (or bigotry as in the case of Edgars) cause you to throw out one of the few political powers allowed to us under the Constitution.

[Moirai]

I was thinking more along the lines of what Freedom said about thinking drug laws are shit, and the justice system being slanted against blacks, and that’s what he based his decision on. Drug laws and the way they are enforced can be changed.

I had never heard of the Fully Informed Juror, and read the last link. It was interesting and made some good points. One thing that caught my eye-

“Because a jury’s guilty decision must be unanimous, it takes only one vote to effectively nullify a bad “act of the legislature”. Your one vote can “hang” a jury; and although it won’t be an acquittal, at least the defendant will not be convicted of violating an unjust or unconstitutional law.”

How does this nullify a bad law, really? Doesn’t it just let one person go? Is there a standard that says if enough juries don’t convict people of a particular crime, we’ll stop charging people with it?

[Moirai]

*Originally posted by stuffinb *
**

*Originally posted by EJsGirl *
**If Freedom or anyone else disagrees with a law, then lobby for change. Don’t refuse to apply or enforce it. If you are the victim of a crime, would you want the responding cop or presiding judge to decide that he doesn’t agree with the idea or practical application of that law, and not enforce it? **

So to hell with the Constitution and the Supreme Court, the laws the law? **

No, but there is a big difference between bringing a Constitutional or higher court challenge and simply saying “I don’t believe it, so forget it.”

[SuaSponte]

*Originally posted by EJsGirl *
“Because a jury’s guilty decision must be unanimous, it takes only one vote to effectively nullify a bad “act of the legislature”. Your one vote can “hang” a jury; and although it won’t be an acquittal, at least the defendant will not be convicted of violating an unjust or unconstitutional law.”

How does this nullify a bad law, really? Doesn’t it just let one person go? Is there a standard that says if enough juries don’t convict people of a particular crime, we’ll stop charging people with it?

To some extent, yes. In the bookmaker and stripper cases I noted, word got out about the nullification by juries (IIRC, bookies were in Atlanta and strippers were in Dallas), and juries in subsequent cases in the jurisdiction took heart and started voting to acquit as well. The effect has been that the local D.A.'s are starting to not bring the cases in the first place.

Sua

[Stuffy]

No, but there is a big difference between bringing a Constitutional or higher court challenge and simply saying “I don’t believe it, so forget it.”

Not really. To me Jury Nullification means: Not on my watch I fully support the fact that we have appelate courts and the Supreme court. But if I’m on a jury and I think the law is wrong, I’m voting to acquit.

For some reason I’ve never been called for Jury Duty.

[Hamlet]

OK I have some time.

bare:

It might be just a bit drastic to start calling people liars here.

I simply pointed out that Freedom broke his oath and lied in voir dere. I stand by my statement.

stuffinb:

Until very recently it has been uderstood that the jury place was to decide both the fact of the case and the law.

I don’t know what you consider “very recently”, but jury nullification has been outlawed by the United State’s Supreme Court since 1895. Justice Harlan stated in that opinion:

We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence. Upon the court rests the responsibility of declaring the law; upon the jury, the responsibility of applying the law so declared to the facts as they, upon their conscience, believe them to be. Under any other system, the courts, although established in order to declare the law, would for every practical purpose be eliminated from our system of government as instrumentalities devised for the protection equally of society and of individuals in their essential rights. When that occurs our government will cease to be a government of laws, and become a government of men. Liberty regulated by law is the underlying principle of our institutions.

Sparf & Hansen v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 102-03 (1895).

That opinion, of course, did not stop it from occurring, but it certainly isnt "uderstood [sic] that the jury place was to decide both the fact of the case and the law. " This isn’t a new development.

bare:

it might be better to ask yourself why we are not as jurors told during the jury instructions, that we have a right and a duty to judge the law as well as the circumstances.

You don’t have that right. Just because FJIA says you do, you don’t, and as I will argue, you shouldn’t.

stuffinb:

quote:

           Originally posted by EJsGirl
           If Freedom or anyone else disagrees with a law, then lobby for change. Don't refuse to apply or enforce it. If you are the victim of
           a crime, would you want the responding cop or presiding judge to decide that he doesn't agree with the idea or practical
           application of that law, and not enforce it?

      So to hell with the Constitution and the Supreme Court, the laws the law?

and

Yeah I remembered those instances too. However you can’t let ignorance (or bigotry as in the case of Edgars) cause you to throw out one of the few political powers allowed to us under the Constitution.

I searched my copy of the Constitution and couldn’t find anything granting the right of a jury to nullify a case. The fact is it isnt there. EL’sGirl made a very good point: If you think a law is unfair lobby to change it. Just dont sit on a jury knowing you’re going to nullify and lie and go back on your oath.

But if I’m on a jury and I think the law is wrong, I’m voting to acquit. For some reason I’ve never been called for Jury Duty.

So you would tell the judge you could be fair and impartial when you know you couldn’t? And then you’d lie when you take the oath to decide the case on the facts and the instructions? All I can say is THANK GOD you’ve never been on a jury.

More later.
SuaSponte
quote:

[waterj2]

In case anyone wants more than just a feeling behind the assertion that the legal system is not fair to blacks, I offer the following from last week’s The Economist:

A report by The Sentencing Project… notes that black people account for 13% of monthly drug users; 35% of those arrested for possessing drugs; 55% of those convicted; and 74% of those sentenced to prison,

Damn.

As for me, if called for jury duty, I would not vote to convict someone of most drug laws, and several other victimless crimes as well. I would not try to hide this fact when being questioned, or try to pretend that I’m deciding on the merits of the case. Most likely, I would not be chosen, and I feel that if enough people refuse to convict drug offenders, prosecution will become more difficult.

[bare]

Maybe I should have read some of the stuff already out there on the web. Having just poked in Jury nullification and the law, it is obvious that you are wrong in your assertions Hamlet. It is apparant that there is a whole lot more recent Supreme Court and lesser court decisions than your 1895 quote by Justice Harlan.

There still appears to be a lot of debate going on about the subject and as Straight Dopers, it is our duty to fully investigate and conduct civil debate regarding such an important subject.

[Tedster]

A couple things, while I haven’t actually served on Jury Duty, I’ve been summoned as on standby.

1. The questionaire they send out is pretty intrusive, in my opinion. I can’t remember all the questions, but I remember being a little pissed off at it.

2. From my understanding, if you’re in a technical trade or otherwise show traits of “intelligence” you’re likely to be undesirable from the defense standpoint. Basically, they want people to be a little on the slow side, perhaps. I’d like to hear otherwise, anyway.

Apparently, the “Your Rights as a Juror” line of thinking doesn’t exactly have a lot of people happy. It is my understanding that it’s no longer a requirement to have a 12-0 unanimity any more in some states. If you have a recalcitrant juror, they throw him off and convict 11-0 all nice and legal like. Hm…

[Hamlet]

My professor’s always told me to start with a thesis statement (well, by saying that I’m not actually starting with a thesis statement, but a statement about a thesis statement…) so here goes:

Jury Nullification is bad. (pretty basic)

1. Although there are some great examples of its exercise (fugitive slave laws), there are also hideous examples of it’s exercise, as capacitor pointed out.

2. A jury decision is completely unreviewable. Those who believe nullification is a good exercise of checks and balances on an overzealous legislature need to realize that there is no check or balance on nullification. Guy gets acquited, he cant be charged again. No appeal by the State, no court review, it’s just over.

3. Jury’s don’t have all the facts. The evidence presented to the jury is all bound by the strictures of the rules of evidence. They don’t know all the facts surrounding the case or the defendant. In Freedom’s attempt at nullification, he admitted he didn’t know anything about the Defendant or his background, or any other evidence that might have been suppressed. It has been decided to have a jury system that deliberately keeps certain evidence from the jury. They don’t have all the facts, and without all the facts, they shouldn’t be allowed to nullify.

4. As EJ’sGirl pointed out: You aren’t solving the problem. Letting one person get away with a crime you know they committed is not going to change anything. If you are all excited about fighting the system, DO IT. Get out there and work to get whatever law you want changed, changed. That’s the beauty of America. And with all due respect Sua, there were numerous protests, newspaper articles, etc regarding your example. To say it was the result of jury nullification ignores the other forces at work.

5. Tolerating jury nullification allows the jury to use bias in the decision-making process. If the defendant’s jury is made up 12 KKK members, you can bet the defendant is not getting a fair trial. As they instruct juries in Illinois “neither sympathy nor bias should influence you.” Saying jury nullification allows the potential of great harm.

6. The rule of law argument. With nullification, laws would change daily depending on the twelve people in the jury box for a particular day. Currently, legislators have access to information from a broad base of constituents via letters, telegrams, phone calls, protests, and the media. Nullification merely provides legislators the feedback of twelve people on a given day. This is not democracy; it is anarchy. Nullification allows 12 people to overrule the entire legislative branch. Whether those 12 people are Freedom and his friends, the moral majority, or the KKK, they shouldn’t have that power.

Finally, my problem with Freedom in particular is that it is usually necessary for nullifiers to have lied and broken oaths to exercise their “rights” to nullification. To me, that is a very bad place to be arguing from.

[Hamlet]

bare:

Having just poked in Jury nullification and the law, it is obvious that you are wrong in your assertions Hamlet. It is apparant that there is a whole lot more recent Supreme Court and lesser court decisions than your 1895 quote by Justice Harlan.

Thank you for pointing this out. Of course jury nullification has been discussed by appeallate courts and the Supreme Court, since Spartz. There have been many cases in many jurisdictions that have dealt with this issue. In a vast majority of the cases, however, jury’s cannot be instructed that they have the right to nullify. Responses to your concern as to why they don’t tell jury’s of that right have invoked the reasoning found in Spartz, as well as the reasons I laid out in my second long post. Jury nullification exists, there is no denying it. The O.J. Simpson case (oh god, i shouldn’t open this can of worms) is an example where covert nullification occurs. Courts, both trial level and appeallate, have accepted the fact that juries can nullify. My entire point was that it is not a right granted in the consitution as stuffinb pointed out, and that it SHOULD not occur.

[waterj2]

2. A jury decision is completely unreviewable. Those who believe nullification is a good exercise of checks and balances on an overzealous legislature need to realize that there is no check or balance on nullification. Guy gets acquited, he cant be charged again. No appeal by the State, no court review, it’s just over.

Assuming that the guy gets acquitted, which requires more votes than a hung jury. If a law has such little support that acquittal is a frequent worry when the case is brought to trial, to me that represents a failure of the democratic process.

3. Jury’s don’t have all the facts. The evidence presented to the jury is all bound by the strictures of the rules of evidence. They don’t know all the facts surrounding the case or the defendant. In Freedom’s attempt at nullification, he admitted he didn’t know anything about the Defendant or his background, or any other evidence that might have been suppressed. It has been decided to have a jury system that deliberately keeps certain evidence from the jury. They don’t have all the facts, and without all the facts, they shouldn’t be allowed to nullify.

That makes no sense whatsoever. If ignorance of the facts were a concern, what the jury would be forbidden would be the power to judge based on the facts of the case. However, this is exactly what their primary purpose is. In a jury nullification situation, what they are examining is the law itself, which is known, in its entirety by the jury.

What would he need to know about the defendant? It was a man accused of doing something that Freedom did not think should be illegal. What about the defendant could have made a conviction under an unjust law palatable to Freedom?

5. Tolerating jury nullification allows the jury to use bias in the decision-making process. If the defendant’s jury is made up 12 KKK members, you can bet the defendant is not getting a fair trial. As they instruct juries in Illinois “neither sympathy nor bias should influence you.” Saying jury nullification allows the potential of great harm.

If the defendant’s jury is made up of 12 KKK members, the defense attorney is not doing his job. In any event, jury nullification is not about being biased, but about determining the fairness of the law. Being biased is another matter.

6. The rule of law argument. With nullification, laws would change daily depending on the twelve people in the jury box for a particular day. Currently, legislators have access to information from a broad base of constituents via letters, telegrams, phone calls, protests, and the media. Nullification merely provides legislators the feedback of twelve people on a given day. This is not democracy; it is anarchy. Nullification allows 12 people to overrule the entire legislative branch. Whether those 12 people are Freedom and his friends, the moral majority, or the KKK, they shouldn’t have that power.

Jury nullification is, and always has been allowed in this country. Somehow, we have not devolved into anarchy.

[Hamlet]

waterj

Assuming that the guy gets acquitted, which requires more votes than a hung jury. If a law has such little support that acquittal is a frequent worry when the case is brought to trial, to me that represents a failure of the democratic process.

This doesn’t change the fact that there are no checks on the jury’s decision. 12 people voted to acquit plenty of men who killed African Americans. Does this mean that laws against murder are a failure of the democratic process?

That makes no sense whatsoever. If ignorance of the facts were a concern, what the jury would be forbidden would be the power to judge based on the facts of the case. However, this is exactly what their primary purpose is. In a jury nullification situation, what they are examining is the law itself, which is known, in its entirety by the jury.

Juries do not get all of the facts. There are rules of evidence that keep certain things i/e suppressed evidence, heresay, and defendant’s priors. They are told to make a determination on the facts THAT HAVE BEEN PRESENTED TO THEM, not the entirety of the facts surrounding the case. In the one example, take Freedom’s case, where the nullification vote is predicated on the law (which isnt always the case, there are plenty of cases where the decision to nullify is based solely on race), the jury is only empowered to decide the case for one single defendant. As I said earlier, jury nullification does not have the effect of changing any law, all it does it let one person escape conviction under that law.

In any event, jury nullification is not about being biased, but about determining the fairness of the law.

Not in all cases. Again, if we limit ourselves to the single example of Freedom’s case (had the jury all agreed with him/her and nullified the case) it is only 12 people deciding the fairness of the law. That is against the entire republican system in the US.

      Jury nullification is, and always has been allowed in this country.

You can’t have our system of justice without having the possiblity of jury nullification. I can’t argue that nullification is impossible, so of course it is “allowed.” It just shouldn’t happen.

[bare]

Hamlet, you keep refering to the nullification by jury as being a serious problem in race based trials. So far you have failed to mention any particulars.

The most mentioned case I’ve seen in the information I’ve read is the travesty of justice involving the murder of Medgar Evers by Byron de la Beckwith.

In the 1964 trials there was intentional lying and suppression of evidence by investigating officers and a racist judge.

Beckwith later admitted the murder, proving the fact of the lies and coverups. If anyone wants further information on the case as well as other racially motivated concerns regarding jury nullification, check out the first link I provided and click on FAQ’s.

As waterj2 pointed out, the seating of a racist jury is the fault of the attorneys in the case. The Voir Dire process is designed to avoid this very problem. Obviously
if both the prosecution, defense, and judge are in collusion, justice will not be served.

The apparant reason that jury nullification is still around is that our founding fathers felt that it was an important check against government tyrany, and no one has been able to reverse the process yet.

Two states require that a jury be FULLY instructed in their rights and duties. What we have to wonder is that if we are going to continue to trust the average populace to pass judgement on their peers, why should they not be fully informed and be exposed to all the pertinant information about the case and the accuseds’ past. I can understand the withholding of heresay evidence, but I don’t know enough about the rules of evidence at this point to make a valid argument.

This is all pretty fascinating though, leave it to the teeming millions to Question Authority.

[IzzyR]

Stuffinb

I don’t think your quotes are necessarily about jury nullification. They (the ones that refer to juries deciding the law) may mean interpreting the law, as opposed to simply disregarding it.

Though I think the celebrated Zenger case was straight out nullification.

[waterj2]

This doesn’t change the fact that there are no checks on the jury’s decision.

There are also no checks on the President’s pardon power. Both can be used on a case by case basis to correct flaws. A single jury cannot nullify a law, just one conviction under that law. Only those laws that have a large number of people opposed to enforcing can really be affected by jury nullification.

12 people voted to acquit plenty of men who killed African Americans. Does this mean that laws against murder are a failure of the democratic process?

If those juries had often returned verdicts in support of the idea that murdering a black man should be legal, then there would obviously be large number of people that believed that. However, I suspect that this happened not because of any principled stand against equal rights, but simple bias. Also, I would imagine that a larger problem was that blacks did not have equal access to the judicial system.

Juries do not get all of the facts. There are rules of evidence that keep certain things i/e suppressed evidence, heresay, and defendant’s priors. They are told to make a determination on the facts THAT HAVE BEEN PRESENTED TO THEM, not the entirety of the facts surrounding the case.

How does this pertain to the ability of the jury to determine whether the law is fair?

In the one example, take Freedom’s case, where the nullification vote is predicated on the law (which isnt always the case, there are plenty of cases where the decision to nullify is based solely on race), the jury is only empowered to decide the case for one single defendant. As I said earlier, jury nullification does not have the effect of changing any law, all it does it let one person escape conviction under that law.

In what cases, in the past 30 years, has a jury purposely ignored the facts of the case and decided it due to race?

In any event, a jury only tries one case, and can not overturn any law by itself. It would be stupid if it could. It can, however, refuse to be a party to convicting someone of what it feels to be an unjust law.

Not in all cases. Again, if we limit ourselves to the single example of Freedom’s case (had the jury all agreed with him/her and nullified the case) it is only 12 people deciding the fairness of the law. That is against the entire republican system in the US.

No, it’s not. If people had wanted the law, right or wrong, zealously prosecuted and enforced, the Constitution would not have guaranteed jury trials. As long as juries have existed (I believe) one of their strengths was that they served as a way for the people to keep the power of the state in check. In this country, there is no check on the ultimate power of the people to determine the type of government they have. In theory.

Oh, and authority, if you are paying attention, what is the capital of Assyria?

-waterj2, always questioning authority

[Freedom]

I am a free thinking individual who is capable of making my own moral judgements. I refuse to be led and corralled by our government into rubber stamping decisions I see as wrong.

I can not think of one instance in my entire life where I made a decision for the sole reason that “the law says so.”
I would have hidden a Jew during WWII. I would have helped with the Underground Railroad in the 1800’s. I would have helped tear down the Berlin Wall.
I was not put in those circumstances. I was put in the circumstance to decide whether or not I would allow our current government to incarcerate a man for something that I deeply believe is not wrong.
I’m not quite sure who you guys think I am. I’m just a self-employed contractor trying to make my way through life as best I can. I take life one small step at a time and I try to make decisions that allow me to face myself in the mirror each morning.

If this thread is populated by people who have faced great injustices and forced their case in front of the Supreme Court, then I applaud you. The USSC was a little beyond my reach that day. I was 23, scared to death and completely divided on what I should do.
I decided that I might not be able to change the world, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let the government coerce me into throwing this guy into jail.

To quote stuffinb:

Not on my watch.

Now to address some specific points:

but if you think drug laws are draconian and should not be enforced, you never should have been a juror.

You and I will probably never see eye to eye on this topic because this is exactly where we differ.

It is my opinion that it was my responsibility to be a juror in this case and vote in a way that prevented a person from being thrown in jail unjustly.

The jury should be people who have not prejudged the case…you did. I think it’s an incredible shame.

Actually, I did not pre-judge the case or the person. I pre-judged the law.

There has never been a point in human history, nor will there ever be one, where I think that some abstract concept of “the law” should override a person’s internal judgement. If jury nullification was as bad as you make it sound, we would have strict penalties for it and it would be specifically prohibited.

As it stands, I see jury nullification as one of the reasons we have juries.

Why do so many people actively try to fuck up the system, then complain that it sucks? Jury duty is not a hardship, it’s a priviledge. I didn’t always think so, but I’ve grown up.

Hello?

Have you been reading the same thread as the rest of us?

I could have sworn this was a thread about jury nullification and not one about avoiding jury duty. I didn’t shirk my duty, nor did I attempt to “fuck up the system.”

If anything, I took the hard way out.

If you are the victim of a crime, would you want the responding cop or presiding judge to decide that he doesn’t agree with the idea or practical application of that law, and not enforce it?

You do understand that I was a JUROR and not a cop or a judge don’t you?

Besides, there was no victim.

I was thinking more along the lines of what Freedom said about thinking drug laws are shit, and the justice system being slanted against blacks, and that’s what he based his decision on

My decision was a color blind decision based soley on my opinions of the drug laws.

My opinion of the the justice system being slanted against blacks was only partially formed after my internal struggle with letting a poor black guy go free.

A couple of years later I had the opportunity to volunteer in a youth detention center. There was not one white kid in the facility. I was blown away.

Go compare sentencing guidelines for similiar weights of crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Ask yourself why the drug of choice for white Americans has lesser penalties than the one for black Americans.

Ask yourself how we can expect poor blacks to break the cycle of broken families when we keep incarcerating their fathers and husbands.

Ask yourself just how big the prison industry is, and how we can justify letting these people lobby for tougher laws in order for them to get more “clients” so that they can make more money.

So you would tell the judge you could be fair and impartial when you know you couldn’t? And then you’d lie when you take the oath to decide the case on the facts and the instructions? All I can say is THANK GOD you’ve never been on a jury.

Do you consider this an absolute standard?

Would you condem a man who lied to get on a jury because he knew that they were going to try another man for helping a slave escape?

If you wouldn’t condem that man, then the only difference between our positions is a few shades of grey.

Jury Nullification is bad. (pretty basic)

Actually, it’s a generalization. It has been bad, and it has been good. If you want to try and make me defend every case of jury nullification, then I will save you the time and admit that it has been misused.

But then so has everything else under the sun.

If you want to make a compelling arguement against it, then justify eliminating jury nullification in cases where it is obviously in the right.

Or is the real issue here that you disagree with the particular ISSUE I decided to nullify on, and not the issue of nullification itself.

In Freedom’s attempt at nullification, he admitted he didn’t know anything about the Defendant or his background, or any other evidence that might have been suppressed

If you read my explanation, then you know that I struggled to remove the individual from my decision. There was not a fact in the world that would have made me convict on a drug possesion charge. I knew the law, and I knew that it was wrong, for any person under any circumstance.

Finally, my problem with Freedom in particular is that it is usually necessary for nullifiers to have lied and broken oaths to exercise their “rights” to nullification. To me, that is a very bad place to be arguing from.

An even worse place to be arguing from is one where you are a lone, uneducated, poor individual with the entire power of the state lined up against you.

Forgive me if I break the rules by refusing to play with the stacked deck the state has dealt.

. That is against the entire republican system in the US.

Or at least the 25% of the population that voted for the winner. Of course, we have already agreed that the Republican system is fallible and NEEDS to be challenged sometimes.

In addition, I don’t think ANYONE believes that anywhere near a majority of the people (or even the representatives themselves) know what is in those huge omnibus bills they have been passing for the last 30 years.

[MEBuckner]

In what cases, in the past 30 years, has a jury purposely ignored the facts of the case and decided it due to race?

California v. Simpson…?

As to Jim Crow-era nullifications of murder prosectuions of whites who killed blacks: the elected legislatures of those states also passed laws mandating segregation. Does that mean that elected legislatures are bad? The “republican” institutions of the Jim Crow South were flawed–not only were blacks not represented, but things like the “county unit” system in some states meant the population as a whole was not fairly represented. And blacks didn’t serve on juries either. We didn’t throw out representative legislatures in those states; we corrected the racist and undemocratic flaws in those states’ system of representative democracy. That juries have been abused by bigots doesn’t necessarily mean that we should throw out juries, either. (Or reduce their powers.)

[Typo_Negative]

*Originally posted by bare *
**As waterj2 pointed out, the seating of a racist jury is the fault of the attorneys in the case. The Voir Dire process is designed to avoid this very problem. **

A question. How, exactly, would Voir Dire avoid this problem if the racist potential jurors lie about their ability to be impartial?

[Dave_Stewart]

I have little doubt I’m not the only lawyer here, but as a lawyer I find this thread fascinating.

In the jurisdictions in which I practice law;

1. I can never be a juror, so its intriguing for that reason to read your opinions and about your experiences; and
2. juries are not permitted for civil matters, except defamation at the option of the plaintiff. They are permissible for criminal trials, at the option of the accused.

I have been a critic of the jury system for a long time. How are 12 individuals able to work out very difficult issues, especially in complicated civil matters, or criminal matters involving expert evidence? Even in specialist civil areas, such as information technology, intellectual property and defamation, specialist judges are used, because ordinarily trained judges struggle with the issues.

I broadcast my merry opinion loudly over the internet until I crossed swords with a Cornell grad at the now defunct Society for the Perpetuation of independent Thought (I hope he’s reading this, but I think he’s on holiday somewhere). This person pointed out that in England in the 1800s, jurors would often act as a counterbalance for draconian laws (deportation or death for petty theft). Juries serve a crucial function in the justice system, and particularly the criminal justice system. Judges can get jaded, and prosecutors try to improve theior conviction statistics, but jurors are the people in a court room who can best put themselves in the position of the accused.

With the greatest of respect for the Honourable Justice Harlan of the US Supreme Court, I think he’s wrong. Jurors should act in accordance with their conscience. It is not enough to say that you have the right to lobby change. Unless you are a multinational, in this day and age, that is somewhat problematic. Freedom acted in accordance with his conscience and hopefully adds to a statistic that might be noticed one day by someone in power. Black people in the US are discriminated aganst in the legal system, and jurors should express their distaste with that shameful fact.

The sentiment “Not on my watch” has a long and noble tradition which people should uphold. Fearless adherence to your principles is something to be applauded.