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Food Not Bombs trial rescheduled after too many jurors objected to $500 fine for feeding homeless
(www.houstonchronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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In this case, it is because jury nullification was originally used by racists to give white murderers a pass for killing black people.
Yes, jury nullification can have positive uses, but also terrible ones.
I don't think the law CAN function when there's an enormous segment of constituents that don't believe in it. If you have 99.9% racists in a country, it's going to be near-impossible to write laws that put them on a jury and achieve an equitable result.
Ideally, the change today is not that jury nullification is impossible - it's that the percentage of racists has drastically fallen such that even in extremist counties you'd be unilkely to get 12 racist jurors.
And, while old examples are around racism, this could extend to other extreme feelings of justice; in fact I'd say this current case is a good one, if 99.9% of constituents feel a person should not be fined for feeding the homeless.
So make sure everyone knows about how to use it for good.
How in the hell would we accomplish that?
The same way we spread any information: by talking to people about it, making memes about it, posting flyers up, whatever you do, do it. I bring up jury nullification whenever I'm in a conversation about the legal system, and it turns out I hate the legal system so that happens a lot.
Just do exactly what you would do for anything else that you care about and want to make people aware of. I'm not suggesting we levitate the Pentagon with concentration and acid or saying we should end world hunger. Literally just talk about this to people. Upvote. Share this with people. Talk to people and tell them about the case. Tell people about jury nullification. Post a TIL if you just learned about the concept.
You said to use it for good.
Telling someone about jury nullification doesn’t mean they’ll use it for good.
Tell them how to use it for good. The law skews towards evil by the nature of what the law exists to do and the historic inequity inherent in it's application. If jury nullification was used at random it would be used for good more often than not. In the past it was used both in the south to legitimize lynching and in the north to ignore fugitive slave laws ("Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve jurors refusing to convict persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting runaway slaves or being fugitive slaves themselves, and refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#:~:text=Some%20commonly%20cited%20historical%20examples,a%20defendant%20under%20English%20law.)
If you talk about it's history, then you absolutely end up talking about how to use it to nullify illegitimate laws. I said to tell people how to use it for good, not "ensure that every human who knows about this only uses it for good." I didn't say the later because that would be an absurd thing to day that's just obviously impossible to achieve.
And which laws should be subject to jury nullification? Just the ones you think are bad? Who should it be used for or against? Yes, in this case it makes sense if you have any level empathy because the law is needlessly cruel. But what if I fervently believe that laws punishing white collar crime in any way are always cruel so any jury deciding a white collar case should always nullify? Should I go ahead and educate the world that if you're on a jury in a fraud case that bankrupted retirees and school teachers, you should always vote not guilty because the crime of fraud is absurd so punishing it is cruel?
If a law is stupid, you need to fix the legislature or legislative process, not the enforcement. Selective enforcement of the law tends to consistently lead to very bad outcomes.
Vote with your principles. If I don't agree with a law, I'm not going to vote to convict someone of it. Like vice laws; as long as anyone involved consents, I don't think it should be punished. If I'm on a jury, then I have the power to affect that in that case. I'm not going to vote to punish someone because I wasn't able to do so for other cases. Sure, it would be better to get rid of vice laws and you might not agree with me. But I'm only going to vote to punish someone if I think they should be punished, regardless of what any laws say.
What happens when the person's principles include hating women and believing that in violent crimes with a female victim, she must have done something to provoke it in every instance so if the defendant is a male, he should never be found guilty? People who believe this actually exist and might be otherwise eligible to serve on a jury. Should they be allowed to nullify because they think a man should never be punished for assaulting a woman?
I know it's an extreme example but it's not a slippery slope because stuff like this actually happens. It's wild and is the reason why many lawyers and judges really dislike jury nullification.
I think that's a problem with jury trials in general, and even authority in general. Sometimes people who you disagree with strongly end up with the power to affect the lives of others. Jury powers, just as any others, can be abused. But they can also check abuses, like if a prosecutor is overzealous, a judge is biased, or lawmakers corrupt.
I think the best we can do is spread power out as much as possible and hope that people will ultimately prove to be good more often than bad, so that all of the maneuvering and countering people use their power for will trend more towards good. Any solution that concentrates power to keep it out if the hands of bad people has the footnote "assuming those who get that power are good and use it in good faith and don't change while they have power", which is not a safe assumption.
Definitely agree with you there. I just never like how simplistic people make jury nullification seem. It's really just a quirk in the legal system, not an actual thing juries are supposed to do and it gets abused a lot.
You're describing cops.
I was shot by a fascist. 11 people believed the evidence, one person was also a fascist. Did anyone need to tell the fascist about jury nullification? No. They don't care about the law and never have. That's the point. They already do it all the time. You should know that you can do it too.
That isn't the reason why courts are keeping it seceet
It wasn't originally used that way but it does illustrate the point
Judges and Lawyers hate nullification not because they're snooty elitists who hate us uppity commonfolk knowing our options,
It's because juries that know about nullification are a lot more likely to go ahead and do it, which basically amounts to a legal form of poisoning the jury.
Judges and Lawyers are expecting to be able to argue the case based on the law as a given and that becomes pretty challenging when you now also have to explain to the jury why they shouldn't decide the law being discussed should be thrown out for this case.
It turns the justice system from hypothetical rule of law to mask off rule of societal biases and that would be MUCH WORSE for the justice system than the present alternative.
Consider how bad the justice system is at taking rape cases seriously already, and now consider that with the defense being able to hit the jury with every rape culture "you don't want to ruin his life over this!" rhetorical dungheap imaginable because he knows there's no consequences for inducing a jury to nullify and the jury knows that even if the rapist is guilty they can decide to just ignore that if they like the cut of his rapist gib enough.