Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.
Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.
For better or worse, Jury Nullification’s validity is highly debatable. Its history is also mixed. It was used by juries to acquit people who were charged against the Fugitive Slave Act. It was also used in the Jim Crow era to acquit white people of lynching black people.
I mean sure, if “a jury of your peers” means at least seven other racist fucks, then it could very well go badly.
But it keeps the laws of the land on the same page as the opinions of the people. Jury nullification is as close to democracy as you can hope for.
As opposed to, say, actual democracy.
Well I doubt any of us have any real hope of that.
At a systemic level, its validity is kind of irrelevant because any time you ask a human being to judge whether a law is broken, there’s no way to prevent them from saying no because they don’t agree with the law. Prosecutors and judges can try to weed out jurors who will answer based on their conscience rather than just facts, but they can’t eliminate the possibility.
On a personal level, I can recognize nullification is easy to abuse, but if I’m on a jury and I’m asked to convict someone of breaking an unjust law, I could not in good conscience sacrifice that person’s freedom just because another juror in a different trial could do the same thing for bad reasons.
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
-William Blackstone
I’ll take the bait. Blackstone was wrong and no society can actually function under that kind of a premise.
Most guilty people are already escaping punishment.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/
Which pretty much proves my point, thanks.
I’ll bite:
First of all can we acknowledge that every system is going to be flawed? You’re either going to have innocent people convicted and sent to jail, or guilty people set free. Likely you’ll have some of both.
With that in mind, what do you consider an acceptable ratio of innocent people convicted in order to make sure guilty people are also convicted? As many as it takes?
The whole point I’m making is that systemic flaws are unavoidable and therefore Blackstone’s formulation is a pile of horseshit.
It literally doesn’t even matter what system I think would be better. I claimed that societies can’t function under Blackstone’s formulation and our present circumstances prove that point handily.
Just because you are happy with it doesn’t mean it’s good or that other people should just accept it.
It’s called Perverse Jury in the UK and it’s always caused major shocks when it’s happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#England_and_Wales
Judges don’t like it and politicians have considered making it illegal. It’s been really heating up recently (2021 & 2023) with environmental protestors being acquitted after juries refused to find them guilty.
Judges have tried to avoid it in those cases by blocking the defendent from explaining their moral argument. People were acquitted of the crime but then convicted of contempt of court for breaching the judges orders.