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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

#261

Post by koheripbal »

_8j50 wrote: post #126
MerelyMortal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only quote from him that I know by heart: "This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."

Wow! I have been saying for a while now that in the US at least the judicial system had no relationship with justice or reason. The false pretense of impartiality and apolitical decision making leads most to believe otherwise.

Reason is the foundation of the application of law. It is absolutely taught and practiced in the judicial system. You can see it measured in every judicial review process.

Justice is much more subjective and is the domain of prosecutors and the executive branch.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#262

Post by koheripbal »

parkingrift wrote: post #232
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.

If you think jury nullification is a potential problem just wait until you hear that district attorneys have almost absolute authority to decide what crimes are punished. One person can unilaterally dictate that petty theft is no longer a crime, for example. In that lens I don’t believe jury nullification is much of a problem.

Whataboutism

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#263

Post by lesuorac »

mcv wrote: post #220
SantalBlush wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I served on a grand jury for three months. We listened to police testimony, the DA's office told us the charges, and we voted. Police testimony was all we had to work with when deciding whether or not to indict. It felt like a charade.

I've never been on a jury and live in a country that doesn't have juries at all, as far as I'm aware, but if I lived in the US and served on a jury there, I would never convict solely on police testimony. The police are often not a neutral party. And especially with all the stories of police quotas, extremist groups infiltrating the police, rampant racism in some police departments, and even law enforcement experts t…

Grand juries aren't a real trial. It's a procedural requirement before you federally try somebody for a felony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#264

Post by throwaway0a5e »

alistairSH wrote: post #255
konschubert wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we start with not making stuff illegal that we don't want to enforce?

But society wants selective enforcement. Speeding laws are good when the stop that guy from endangering my kids. Or when they generate revenue from tourists. Those same laws are awful when they inconvenience me.

I think one of our greatest failures as a species is that we have yet to architect a society in which these sorts of double standards of personal belief have sufficient consequences to prevent people from engaging in them with the fervor and frequency that they do.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#265

Post by cyphar »

southerntofu wrote: post #219
cyphar wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah okay, you're having a philosophical argument about the concept of a direct democracy and how it technically should be a form of anarchy or possibly anarcho-syndicalism. While I think that is also a very interesting topic and I'm sure we would agree on many things, I'm not sure it helps to get into the philosophical argument while talking about real-life political systems and the different flavours of representativ…

> you're having a philosophical argument I don't think i am, sorry if it sounds like bikeshedding. I'm interested in the practical question of who holds political power, and who holds the "legitimate violence" to enforce this political power. If me and my neighbors can't "legally" define our own sets of rules and regulations (which we can't in France), i just can't call that a democracy. Time and time again i've witn…

Sorry, I wasn't trying to say it's not an important discussion, just simply that if we start by saying that no country which is not anarchist cannot be called a democracy feels like a semantic gotcha if we're talking about electoral systems in countries that are commonly called democratic.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#266

Post by credit_guy »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #46
shrubble wrote: post #41

Some quotations... for me, the quote from Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is important: 'The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.' https://www.jurorsrule.com/quotations-and-comments-on-fully-...

The only quote from him that I know by heart: "This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."

First time I hear this quote, and maybe I don't know the context, but as is, it's a pretty bad quote.

It implies that in that court, people care only about laws not justice. That may be so, but if that's the case, that's pretty sad, not something to be proud of.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#267

Post by credit_guy »

ALittleLight wrote: post #97
Buttons840 wrote: post #2

I wonder what portion of jurors know what jury nullification is? I've always thought I could simply utter those words and get out of any jury duty. Not that I would, I would love to serve on a jury. I also wonder how many HN readers would be allowed on a jury?

I was on a jury when I was young, maybe eighteen, and haven't been on one again. I was disappointed not to get a whodunnit or some complex case. Instead ,I was on a DUI that resulted in a crash with some extra circumstances. The defense was entirely presented at closing and amounted to the claim that the defendant stopped his car right before the crash, let a hitchhiker take the wheel, the hitchhiker caused the crash…

That's quite a funny story. Was that self-defense? If not, is a lawyer ethically allowed to present such a defense?

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#268

Post by kasey_junk »

Alex3917 wrote: post #10
kasey_junk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world would HN readers not be eligible to serve on a jury. I was on a jury trial when a spouse of a prosecutor office employee was allowed on. People drastically overestimate what will get you moved out of the pool.

> People drastically overestimate what will get you moved out of the pool. If you say in voir dire that you wouldn't vote to convict even if the person is guilty, you're not going to get put on a jury.

On the trial I was on the judge literally said the words “the next person that tries to get out of this jury for bogus reasons is getting cited for contempt”.

No one, not the judge, the prosecutors or the defense want jury selection to take a long time and there are only so many people in the pool to choose from.

That said, on a different trial, a serial killer, it took almost 6 weeks to panel a jury. I was there for a week before being dismissed because I’m morally against the death penalty. Even then the judge interviewed me for 30 minutes on this point, including about my religious upbringing as a child.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#269

Post by credit_guy »

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…

> Jury nullification is one of the strengths of the jury system

I personally find jury nullification as the ultimate form of democracy.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#270

Post by kasey_junk »

washbrain wrote: post #134
kasey_junk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world would HN readers not be eligible to serve on a jury. I was on a jury trial when a spouse of a prosecutor office employee was allowed on. People drastically overestimate what will get you moved out of the pool.

I'm a prison abolitionist who believes the police are generally too powerful and have too many incentives to lie under oath. If a lawyer asked me about these things during jury selection I strongly suspect they'd move me out.

Expect to be grilled on this subject, including being asked to cite instances where you’ve taken actions (protested, worked for legislation, volunteered, etc) based on those beliefs.
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