Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
nytimes.com
Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
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Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#2Hopefully, Congress will pay attention. Convicting a single citizen for non-violent crimes in general are clogging up our jail system. Jury nullification is a clever workaround until the sentencing laws change. This keeps the ultimate power in the hands of the people.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#3When the shabby old man is put on trial for jury tampering, shouldn't a jury of his peers find him not guilty? The deliberation on that trial could be very interesting. Or very difficult because the judge won't let the defendant's counsel say anything. Or both.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#4"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case."
I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide? That's all kinds of messed up.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#5"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide ? That's all kinds of messed up.
Well - kind of.
The idea is to find jurors as close to the "impartial" ideal as possible.
So - if a murder case is being tried - and someone whose family member is a murder victim is called to the jury - they're probably not a great impartial arbiter in that case.
It's called Vior dire, and certainly not unique to the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection#Voir_dire
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#6"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide ? That's all kinds of messed up.
Jurors are selected based on all sorts of things.
You'll find that jurors with higher education are often eliminated (prosecutors hate educated jurors, they tend to be harder to convince), jurors with law experience (even if it's as simple as a law class in high school) also tend to be eliminated, because they know at least a little something about standards of proof and nullification, etc.
The list of things that you can be eliminated for by either the judge or one of the attorneys (who get a limited number [3, I think] of eliminations) is staggering.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#7"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide ? That's all kinds of messed up.
Juries are to be impartial and decide only upon the evidence that is put forth by the prosecutor and defendant as it relates to the charges and the law that defines those charges. If a juror states up front that they'll vote one way or another, without hearing the evidence, based on some prejudice then they will be disqualified.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#8"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide ? That's all kinds of messed up.
It's more likely that during interviews it became clear that the jurors knew about nullification and they were excluded from the pool for that reason. It then probably dwindled the size of the pool enough that the Judge became concerned about being able to find jurors that are unaware of nullification.
The Jury selection process, from what I understand, tries to exclude anyone that might know about nullification specifically because they don't like the Jury having more social power than the Judge.
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#9[deleted]
Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
#10"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide ? That's all kinds of messed up.
It probably varies by state (or not), but the last time I was on a jury, the jury selection process went like this:
1. 12 jurors are seated.
2. the prosecution asks questions of the jurors, either as a group (eg, "raise your hand if X") or individually.
3. the defense does the same thing
4. the prosecution can excuse any jurors they think are not suited for the case
5. the defense can do likewise
6. If less than 12 jurors remain, enough new ones are seated to bring the number back to 12, and the process repeats
And the questions the prosecution asks are often framed like "Is there any reason you would fundamentally be unable to return a 'guilty' verdict in this case?" or "is X a reason you would not be able to return a 'guilty' verdict?" etc.
At which point, an honest person who believes jury nullification would apply here, would have to say "Yes, I would refuse to vote guilty in this case because I think the law is wrong" or whatever. Of course if you do that, you're basically asking to be excused.
In my case, they never used the phrase "jury nullification" in the selection process, but they asked questions that roughly corresponded to asking about that.
Also, I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many jurors each side can excuse. In the case where I served, quite a few jurors were excused by one side or the other, but we didn't come close to exhausting the pool of candidates (which was, I believe, somewhere between 50-60 people).