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Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

nytimes.com

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Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#91

Post by gnaritas »

Qo wrote: post #66

I'm a little disappointed that the article doesn't mention a serious practical impediment to nullification - the "voir dire" process of juror selection. They ask you a series of questions, one of them usually being "Will you apply the law as I explain it to you?" You are 100% within your rights to answer no - they'll excuse you from the jury. If you say "yes", however, but you mean "no", then you have committed perju…

> They ask you a series of questions, one of them usually being "Will you apply the law as I explain it to you?"

I've done jury duty, they ask me no such thing.

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#92

Post by jgeralnik »

comex wrote: post #75
prob_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose just 5% of the potential jurors believe, say, that it should not be illegal to kill an abortion doctor, or to beat up someone who dares to be homosexual in public, or to beat up someone who dares to flirt with a white woman while being black, and so on. If you have a jury of 12 and require a unanimous verdict for conviction, then 46% of randomly chosen juries will not convict people for the aforementioned cri…

No distribution needed - 46% is 100% - (100% - 5%)^12, as if you were rolling a die 12 times. The population is large enough that the effect of removing 11 people from it should be negligible.

This is not "no distribution", this is a binomial distribution - where every one of n items has an equal probability p of being a certain result. You are correct that in this case removing the 11 people from the population is negligible, thus p remains the same.

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#93

Post by MPSimmons »

impendia wrote: post #26

I served as a juror on a ten week murder trial, and one thing I learned (to my extreme exasperation) is that you can't ask questions. I mean, you can ask, but every time I asked anything the judge gave some roundabout non-answer, and it was obvious that she was required to do so. In particular, the verdict hinged on some technicalities, and we got about 40 pages explaining the law. I attempted to clarify the exact me…

I've wondered before why, after the prosecution and defense lawyers are done with a witness, the jury can't also question the witness. Can anyone help me understand why that's not allowed?

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#94

Post by Cadsby »

Qo wrote: post #70
eridius wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it only be perjury if you had already decided to nullify when you were asked the question?

Probably. If they charge you, are you comfortable with that as your defense?

Very unlikely this would occur. Jury deliberations are considered sacrosanct in American jurence prudence. You are under no obligation to explain your reasoning to anyone when deciding a verdict. And courts have been traditionally very wary of allowing prosecutors to delve too deeply into them to go on fishing expeditions unless a very specific procedure has been shown to have been violated.

The prosecution would essentially have to read your mind to demonstrate that you somehow "lied" in answering the questions during jury selection, which is why what you're describing virtually never happens. And there's always the plausible defense that you simply changed your mind as the trial unfolded.

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#95

Post by randallsquared »

scarmig wrote: post #43
squozzer wrote: post #30

I would suggest to anyone interested in the topic to read The Trial of John Peter Zenger. It represents an extreme case of judicial process manipulation that would have been very difficult to defeat without the help of a sympathetic jury. As the Joe Fridays of the world are very eager to point out, nullification DOES subvert the rule of law. So I don't support its' use for every situation. But bad laws and rigged jus…

The big issue I see with nullification is that, once you grant it is justified unjust laws, you make it so that any law can be nullified in a given case, depending on the particular jury selected. Good! you might say. But now imagine you're in the rural South, trying a case of what was effectively a lynching. If you say that jurors can ignore the facts of the case and the law, no matter how much evidence you offer th…

Either position will produce at least some viscerally unpleasant situations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#96

Post by s00pcan »

tzs wrote: post #63

Suppose just 5% of the potential jurors believe, say, that it should not be illegal to kill an abortion doctor, or to beat up someone who dares to be homosexual in public, or to beat up someone who dares to flirt with a white woman while being black, and so on. If you have a jury of 12 and require a unanimous verdict for conviction, then 46% of randomly chosen juries will not convict people for the aforementioned cri…

That's cute; you think the system isn't broken. I'd rather not needlessly put people in jail and ruin their lives for victimless crimes than be pragmatic.

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#97

Post by [deleted] »

colanderman wrote: post #12
adestefan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Juries are to be impartial But selecting juries based on that trait (or any trait for that matter) is in direct conflict with one's right to trial by a jury of his peers (presumably defined as the general populace). Once you predicate the selection process, you skew a uniform sampling of "peers" and the jurors selected are no longer representative of one's "peers". (Not arguing, just trying to understand.)

[deleted]

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#98

Post by pash »

stan_rogers wrote: post #21
colanderman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Juries are to be impartial But selecting juries based on that trait (or any trait for that matter) is in direct conflict with one's right to trial by a jury of his peers (presumably defined as the general populace). Once you predicate the selection process, you skew a uniform sampling of "peers" and the jurors selected are no longer representative of one's "peers". (Not arguing, just trying to understand.)

The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which provides only for "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".

The "jury of your peers" language, whose origin is the Magna Carta [1], is included in the constitutions of a number of states, so the concept directly pertains in many American jurisdictions.

There is also a considerable body of federal case law applying the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the process of jury selection. Since 1880, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a black man's conviction for murder due to the systematic exclusion of blacks from local juries [1], federal courts have consistently ruled that jurors must be selected indiscriminately from eligible members of the community. This is very close to the concept of a "jury of your peers".

1. See clause 29 of the 1297 document: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_ca... ; the further origin is the first Magna Carta of 1215.

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#99

Post by MPSimmons »

sophacles wrote: post #52
tsotha wrote: post #46

I understand why people wouldn't want to be part of the system that punishes people for something the juror doesn't think should be illegal. But it isn't your job, as a juror, to write the laws. The honorable thing to do is to answer truthfully when they ask you if you can apply the law in the case you've been assigned. Having said that, let me say I think prosecuting a guy for handing out nullification leaflets is a…

Remember, a central idea in the Constitution is a balance of power, often called "a system of checks and balances". Much like the 2nd Amendment, the jury system is partly about preventing the government from taking too much power from the people. Deciding if a law was broken is part of it, true, but there are other aspects. For example one of the reasons for the jury is to decide if mitigating circumstances or eviden…

Yes. And the ultimate check on all of the other processes is the citizenry. We elect representatives of ours to write laws, we elect representatives of ours to execute laws, and we, through the jury process, judge those who are accused of breaking the laws that we (through our representatives) caused to be put into place.

In a very real way, the citizens of the jury are provided with power to prevent injustice in the application of the laws which have been put in place in our name.

Re: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

#100

Post by jeffdavis »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #87
tzs wrote: post #63

Suppose just 5% of the potential jurors believe, say, that it should not be illegal to kill an abortion doctor, or to beat up someone who dares to be homosexual in public, or to beat up someone who dares to flirt with a white woman while being black, and so on. If you have a jury of 12 and require a unanimous verdict for conviction, then 46% of randomly chosen juries will not convict people for the aforementioned cri…

I strongly disagree. Every juror should understand that they have a responsibility to consider the law, not just the facts. In most trials, that consideration will amount to "Yup, the law seems fine", with no further thought required. However, I believe that consideration ought to happen in every single trial, with every single juror. No reasonable doubt should exist that the law remains just and appropriate. If that…

Where does it stop?

Say someone is on trial for tax evasion, because they paid only 20% rather than the 30% they owe under the law. Is it OK for a juror to say "gee, taxes should only be 20% anyway, so I'm going to let him off the hook"?

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