[Peace-discuss] Jury Nullification

[E. Wayne Johnson]

** The present situation in the US, like so much of US politics, relies 
on keeping the public ignorant. ***


*
C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>      “The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact 
> in controversy.” —John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States 
> (& no radical)
>
> Jury nullification is a jury's refusal to apply the law as written 
> (i.e., to acquit) to a particular case because to do would result in 
> in justice.
>
> Juries have the power to refuse to apply the law when their 
> consciences require that they do so.
>
> The first notable instance of jury nullification in the colonial 
> United States was the famous Zenger case of 1734. A jury refused to 
> convict John Peter Zenger of seditious libel for publishing a 
> newspaper critical of Governor William Cosby of New York.
>
> Jury nullification appeared in the pre-Civil War era when juries 
> sometimes refused to convict for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act.
>
> During Prohibition, juries often nullified alcohol control laws, 
> possibly as often as 60% of the time. Such resistance may have 
> contributed to the adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment -- repealing 
> the Eighteenth Amendment which established Prohibition.
>
> Today many discussions of jury nullification center around drug laws 
> that some consider unjust either in principle or because they are seen 
> to discriminate against certain groups. A jury nullification advocacy 
> group estimates that 3–4% of all jury trials involve nullification, 
> and a recent rise in hung juries is seen by some as being indirect 
> evidence that juries have begun to consider the validity or fairness 
> of the laws themselves.
>
> The present situation in the US, like so much of US politics, relies 
> on keeping the public ignorant.  A 1969 Fourth Circuit decision, U.S. 
> v. Moylan, affirmed the right of jury nullification, but also upheld 
> the power of the court to refuse to permit an instruction to the jury 
> to this effect. In 1972, in United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, 
> the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
> Circuit issued a ruling similar to Moylan that affirmed the de facto 
> power of a jury to nullify the law but upheld the denial of the 
> defense's chance to instruct the jury about the power to nullify. In 
> 1988, the Sixth Circuit upheld a jury instruction that "There is no 
> such thing as valid jury nullification."  In 1997, the Second Circuit 
> ruled that jurors can be removed if there is evidence that they intend 
> to nullify the law, under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 23(b). 
> The Supreme Court has not recently confronted the issue of jury 
> nullification.
>
> No one of course would argue that juries always arrive at a just 
> result. I think the answers to your questions as to whether your three 
> instances count as jury nullification are as follows:
>
>      1) yes, although the result was clearly unjust;
>
>      2) probably, although the result was clearly unjust, unless there 
> was some basis in the statute for that argument; and
>
>      3) no, Simpson was acquitted because of prosecutorial 
> malfeasance: the prosecution did not present enough untainted evidence 
> to the jury that he'd committed the murders -- although he probably 
> did.  The LAPD tried to railroad a guilty man, and the jury rightly 
> prevented them from doing it.
>
> --CGE
>
>
> John W. wrote:
>>
>> ... Jury nullification is a fascinating subject.  It's usually only 
>> applied,
>>  in my experience, in drug crimes.  [I find myself wondering if jury 
>> nullification took place much in the era of Prohibition.]   I've 
>> never heard
>> of jury nullification being consciously used in a case of, say, 
>> murder or
>> rape, because everyone agrees that those things are clearly crimes.
>>
>> That said, here are three questions for you, to test your 
>> understanding and
>> to illustrate just how murky the law can be:
>>
>> 1) Emmett Till, a Negro youth, is murdered by a couple of white men 
>> in the
>> south in 1955, for allegedly having whistled at a white woman.  The 
>> two white
>> men accused of the crime are found "not guilty" by an all-white jury, 
>> despite
>> a considerable amount of evidence that they committed the crime.  Is 
>> that an
>> example of jury nullification?
>>
>> 2) In 1962, a young woman claims that she was raped at a party by a 
>> young man
>> she barely knew, after having a few too many drinks.  The jury, 
>> consisting
>> mostly of males, finds the young man not guilty because, they feel, 
>> the young
>> woman was complicit by allowing herself to get inebriated and by 
>> dressing
>> provocatively.  Is that an example of jury nullification?
>>
>> 3) O.J. Simpson is accused of having murdered his ex-wife and her 
>> friend in
>> 1994.  After a spectacular 6-month trial, he is found "not guilty" by a
>> mixed-race jury, on the basis of police racism and supposed planting of
>> evidence.  Is that an example of jury nullification?
>>
>> John Wason
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