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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

#161

Post by southerntofu »

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…

> Saying "no system fully implements direct democracy" feels like a no-true-scotsman stance, since by the same token no system fully implements representative democracy either

Of course some systems implement forms of direct democracies, although they are not represented in the UN because they are not taking part in the "game of thrones" of international politics. But saying that no Nation State implements direct democracy is right on point, because "democracy" is the very opposite (by definition, i.e. "power to the people") to the State ("power over the people").

In contrast, most States on Earth (even Kingdoms!) implement forms of representation/election. Now, can we even call that a democracy? Electoral systems as we know them today were designed in the 18th century by french and american politicians/philosophers who were strongly opposed to (and afraid of) democracy so that's a bit of a stretch.

I mean take a very simple issue: ask everyone "should some people be sleeping on the streets when there's millions of empty dwellings?" and they'll all say "no". Now see what the government is doing with this popular will, and you'll understand government don't care about the people and wipe their asses with our needs. Call me "cynical" if you will but i'm certain the people who uphold Nation State have no expertise, and certainly have material interests opposed to ours.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#162

Post by throwawaylinux »

addingnumbers wrote: post #155
throwawaylinux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In fact many are self-proclaimed experts.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#163

Post by watwut »

makeitdouble wrote: post #138
zapdrive wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would depend on what happens next...do the people against lynching get their own place where they decide their own rules democratically ? Or the other way, do pro-lynching people go build a new Lynching Empire somewhere else and leave their land and resources behind ? I'd be a supporter of freedom to decide any rule within a group if there was infinite resources and we'd just move freely to the places we want to b…

People against lynching were primary in the lynched demographic. It was among other things a way to make then scared to go vote and to punish success.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#164

Post by southerntofu »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153
cyphar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And also, from my understanding a local Commune doesn't have the power to overrule national laws locally. Which means that when a short majority of racists sets up bans related to muslim cults as happened a few years ago, a local municipality can't overrule that and say all faiths and buildings and clothings are welcome.

Is my understanding correct?

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#165

Post by watwut »

washbrain wrote: post #128
gorgonian wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but that works better when the lynchees get to vote with the same ease as the lynchers.

Even if they can vote equally, there's no guarantee that minority populations will have the numbers to protect themselves from the tyranny of the majority. We haven't even gotten to the "equal access to voting" part here in the States yet, so we have a long long road before we get to the "voting is a good tool for minorities to protect themselves" phase.

The population of blacks in south was pretty large tho. In some states they had majority. The violence was to keep them away from power.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#166

Post by Xylakant »

ummonk wrote: post #141
bpodgursky wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of determining the law; more often than not it's determining who is lying. Sometimes this is relatively easy ("you left blood with your DNA at the scene") and sometimes hard (you have 3 eyewitnesses, they have 7 people claiming an alibi).

> Sometimes this is relatively easy ("you left blood with your DNA at the scene") Not so easy when you realize that DNA labs are shockingly prone to making type II errors.

And other problems with sampling: There’s the famous case of the “Phantom von Heilbronn”, where the same DNA was found on 40 unrelated crime scenes in multiple countries. In the end, it was found to belong to a worker in the factory that made the swabs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#167

Post by addingnumbers »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #162
addingnumbers wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In fact many are self-proclaimed experts.

If the definition of "self-proclaimed" includes agreeing with popular proclamation, who is ever proclaimed but not self-proclaimed? You've rendered the "self-" prefix redundant, in which case why include it?

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#168

Post by yieldcrv »

roomey wrote: post #148
markdown wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don't mind me asking, which colony is that? Would be interesting to know how that came about

UK got to A/B test governance systems

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#169

Post by [deleted] »

_r4nc wrote: post #74

Has there ever been a case where a jury has actually “invoked” nullification? I put quotes because a jury wouldn’t directly invoke nullification, they would just present a finding clearly contrary to the evidence. Follow up question, does a jury have to provide any reasoning for their finding? Or just the finding itself?

[deleted]

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#170

Post by watwut »

codefreeordie wrote: post #114
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.

A jury is the last line of defense. The state can not use it's power to punish someone unless they can find 12 members of the community who are willing to allow the punishment. It is supposed to be the last, final defense against the perversion of the justice system into political prosecution. The state can make whatever laws it wants, but it can't enforce them without the will of (some of) the people. Probably worke…

Practically it can, because jury trial is expensive, less predictable and carries much longer sentence then plea bargain. So, 94% or so of cases end without trial.

The state says "take 3 years in plea bargain or risk 15 years and huge debt in jury trial".

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