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Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

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Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#151

Post by JumpCrisscross »

zapdrive wrote: post #110
makeitdouble wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think of this as an utter failure of the system, but lingering on this for a while: if the vast majority of citizens (= people who can meaningfully participate in the society) thinks lynching is a good thing, the jury nullification is only a step behind making lynching OK in the books for that group. Of course there could be upper laws blocking them from making it an official stance, but it really feels lik…

I mean, if "the vast majority of citizens thinks something is a good thing", shouldn't it be legal in the first place? Because democracy.

> if "the vast majority of citizens thinks something is a good thing", shouldn't it be legal in the first place? Because democracy

Sort of. It’s tyranny of the majority [1].

The meaning of democracy has changed over millennia. Classically, democracy encompasses “freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, inclusiveness and equality, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights” [2]. Each of these involves constraining majoritarianism. Unfortunately, in modern use, this balance has been lost, with the term democracy becoming more and more interchangeable with direct democracy, a system that predictably fails.

So classically, no, jury nullification of lynching is a failure of several fundamental democratic principles. But in a modern sense, yes, it’s the will of the majority of a certain set of people.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#152

Post by ransom1538 »

nostromo wrote: post #145
thayne wrote: post #139

Someone told me that knowing what jury nullification is can get you out of jury duty, because if the attorneys find out you know what it is during the jury selection process, they won't want you on the jury. I don't know if that's true though.

Don’t try to get out of jury duty. Someone’s life is on the line. Suck it up and do your civic duty.

"Don’t try to get out of jury duty."

My mother was a court stenographer. She had a job in a small court once in nowhere northern california. They had a few jurors skip out of jury duty. The judge told the bailiff walk outside get 2 random people. Sure enough, there was a chef wearing a uniform and some construction worker. BAM. The court is ready.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#153

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cyphar wrote: post #131
simonh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. In practice what we generally have is representative democracy, where we delegate the power to make laws, and make and implement policy to representatives. Those representatives have personal moral responsibility for the laws and decisions they make and are sovereign individuals in t…

> That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. To be fair, Switzerland comes very close. The public can pass initiatives or constitutional amendments without government intervention through public votes, and the few Swiss people I know consider this to be the primary political system in Switzerland (not the representative elect…

> Switzerland comes very close

We very much don’t. Public proposals have to go through multiple rounds of deliberation, cooling down, revision and supermajority popular approval before becoming law.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#154

Post by panda-giddiness »

justzisguyuknow wrote: post #150
nostromo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t try to get out of jury duty. Someone’s life is on the line. Suck it up and do your civic duty.

That's only true in some cases. What about when it's a frivolous civil liability suit, e.g. a slip and fall case. Is there a moral duty to participate in that?

How do you know whether the case is frivolous before it's even been tried?

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#155

Post by addingnumbers »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #88
themitigating wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean people who were elected by other people. There's no difference

Corrupt people who were elected by other people and don't necessarily serve there interests, yes. And I disagree.

Elected officials aren't "self-proclaimed." Election is the best possible example of proclaiming.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#156

Post by fastball »

doctorzook wrote: post #23
bombcar wrote: post #4

If jury nullification doesn’t exist, then juries are pointless

That's just not true, though. I say that without taking a position on the merits of jury nullification. Juries are generally charged with determining matters of fact; the judge matters of law. Even without jury nullification, a jury still determines whether the person performed a proscribed act, or did so with the requisite intent, etc. When people talk about jury nullification, they generally mean the act of a jury…

I think the point is that if you're just trying to determine if the letter of a law was violated (and are not concerning yourself with justice), there isn't much reason to believe that a jury of your (untrained) peers is going to better at that job than one (trained) judge (or even a panel of say 3 judges).

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#157

Post by tsimionescu »

markdown wrote: post #146
altacc wrote: post #144

In the UK jury nullification came into the spotlight at the beginning of this year when four people who helped topple a statue of a slave trader in Bristol were found not guilty by a jury, even though they admitted doing so and there was video & photo evidence. The jury decided that they had acceptable reasons for their actions. [1] The reaction from the right wing government and its supporters was barely short of ap…

Huh? I had no idea the UK had juries. I live in a former colony where we don't have juries and just assumed the same would be true of the UK.

Juries originated in UK common law, the US mostly inherited the idea from there.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#158

Post by gambiting »

nostromo wrote: post #145
thayne wrote: post #139

Someone told me that knowing what jury nullification is can get you out of jury duty, because if the attorneys find out you know what it is during the jury selection process, they won't want you on the jury. I don't know if that's true though.

Don’t try to get out of jury duty. Someone’s life is on the line. Suck it up and do your civic duty.

I believe jury duty is an awful way to decide justice and it shouldn't exist. Other countries manage without it just fine. In my opinion it's your civic duty to get out of it and not support it.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#160

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mcherm wrote: post #14
daenz wrote: post #6

Is jury nullification the ultimate trump card? From what little I know about it, it seems that if enough people in a community knew about it, they could 100% control what crimes are punished in that community. On face value, that makes a sort of sense intuitively, but obviously it has to be balanced against crimes that are in principle clearly wrong, despite what a local community believes.

They could, for instance, prevent for most of a century most prosecutions for lynching.

I sort of think that people who are willing to use jury nullification would just vote not guilty if they didn't know the option existed.
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