[Peace-discuss] Jury Nullification]

[John W.]

Some good quotes.  I'm surprised, though, that Byron "Whizzer" White is the
only Supreme Court justice to appear here.  Surely there would be equally
applicable statements by William O. Douglass, William Brennan, Thurgood
Marshall, et al.?


On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 8:12 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:

 Tom Tindle from Evansville Indiana wrote to me advising that Jury
> Nullification is hardwired into Article I Section 19 of the Indiana
> Constitution (Bill of Rights):
>
> *Section 19. In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right
> to determine the law and the facts.
> *
> (Upheld in Holliday v. State 257N.E.579, 1970)
>
> *
>
>
> Here are some other quotes:
>
> U.S. v. WILSON (629 F.2d 439, 443 (6th Cir. 1980): "In criminal cases, a
> jury is entitled to acquit the defendant because it has no sympathy for the
> government's position."
>
> STEVEN E. BARKAN ("Jury Nullification in Political Trials," Social
> Problems, 31, No. 1, 38, October 1983): "Jury acquittals in the colonial,
> abolitionist, and post-bellum eras of the United States helped advance
> insurgent aims and hamper government efforts at social control. Wide spread
> jury acquittals or hung juries during the Vietnam War might have had the
> same effect. But the refusal of judges in trials of anti war protesters to
> inform juries of their power to disregard the law helped ensure convictions,
> which in turn frustrated anti war goals and protected the government from
> the many repercussions that acquittals or hung juries would have brought."
>
> U.S. vs. DOUGHERTY (1972) [D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals]: The jury
> has...."unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the
> instructions on the law given by the trial judge."
>
> Justice BYRON WHITE (Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 US 145, 155 (1968)): "A right
> to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent
> oppression by the Government."
>
> Justice BYRON WHITE (Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 US 145, 156 (1968)): "Those
> who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was
> necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate
> enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority."
>
>
> Justice BYRON WHITE (Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 US 145, 156 (1968)):
> "Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave
> him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor
> and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant
> preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but
> perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it."
>
> Justice BYRON WHITE (Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 US 522, 530 (1975)): "The
> purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power -- to
> make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against
> the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional
> or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of a judge."
>
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