[Peace-discuss] Jury Nullification

[Ron Szoke]

I'm still not clear how one can draw the distinction between a misapplication of 
the law and a direct appeal to the jury's intuitions about injustice.  

The classic formulation is that a jury of peers represents "the conscience of the 
community," I believe, which is how some obscenity prosecutions by politically 
ambitious prosecutors are derailed.  

Less politically freighted are some euthanasia cases, as in a few early cases 
involving Dr. Kervokian, it seems, where there was a murder charge, but the 
jury decides that it was a mercy to end the pain & suffering in certain terminal 
& hopeless cases, & so acquits.  

Also in point are some putative murder cases I've heard about in which a 
horribly deformed baby is born & is immediately killed by a parent, apparently 
in the belief that the newborn will soon die anyway, & could never possibly  
have anything approaching a normal human life even if it did survive.   
Reportedly, in some such cases the jury has refused to convict, tho there is no 
doubt  that the defendant actually did what he is charged with doing.  

Are these cases of jury nullification, & what conclusion do we draw from that?

-- Ron