Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

Are the cases the same, or just the charges? Why did the defendant choose a jury trial as opposed to a bench trial if they believed the jury was going to be racist? What was the racial composition of the jury in both cases?

The story is usually a lot more complicated.

There also reverse cases of this too, because high-profile cases are usually dealt with more severely, not because of race. For example, a cop in Florida killed a 36 year old white man in very similar circumstances to George Floyd, and got off scot-free. So for better or worse, notoriety also comes into play.

> if enough people in a community knew about it, they could 100% control what crimes are punished in that community

Yes, this is why juries are democratic: on aggregate, they ensure that interpretation of the law still reflects democratic will.

But more to the point - theoretically, regular people in a community already 100% control the law.

This really is the meat of the question.

Trials could be set up so that a jury is presented with specific questions of fact, and they must rule on those questions of fact. "The jury finds the defendant, Bob Bobson, did enter the house of Vick Victimson between the hours of 9PM and 11PM. The jury finds the defendant, Bob Bobson, did take Vick Victimson's property. The jury finds the defendant, Bob Bobson, did push Vick Victimson down the stairs, resulting in his death."

... but they do not. Juries decide on whether the entire crime occured. Guilt or innocence. Moreover, they aren't generally required to give reasoning for rendering their verdict, and only in cases where there is no rational train of thought possible to determine a crime was committed may a judge overrule a jury's finding on the issue of guilt. The full power of finding of fact of "Did any crime occur here" is in the hands of the jury.

I know of someone who sat jury on a case involving someone shooting into a home. Jury found the defendant guilty of reckless endangerment, but the interesting thing is that the jury's reasoning on the topic was that any discharge of a firearm in a city, by virtue of the denseness of the city's population, with no backstop and no planning on where the bullet would end up, should by default be reckless endangerment. I think one could easily find folks familiar with firearms who would disagree, but it doesn't matter. The jury has the power, in that case, to decide "common sense" dictates that's what the words "reckless endangerment" mean.

A jury is not required to explain the reasons for their verdict. In many, probably most, cases the judge won't be able to tell that the jury convicted for improper reasons.

I don't know. I can plausibly read it (knowing nothing about the man) as self-deprecating. A realisation that he's bound by what the law says, even if _he_ finds it unjust.

For example, if a jury finds a defendant guilty of some crime, because they really did it (let's say Aladdin stole some bread from the supermarket and it's clear beyond reasonable doubt that he did indeed), and the law dictates that the _minimum_ penalty is 10 years, then a judge is bound. It does not matter one iota that both the jury and the judge feels this punishment is excessive bordering on ridiculous; in that sense, it is 'a court of law' and not 'a court of justice'. It's not self-serving, it's self-denigrating: Awareness that the judge/jury can't just decide together how to proceed.

That's what jury nullification is about: If a jury member realizes the judge is going to be forced to give a to them utterly ridiculous sentence if the jury finds the defendant guilty, you can simply decide to find them not guilty even though you are well convinced beyond reasonable doubt that they are. Now they are meting out justice and flaunting the law. The jury can actually get away with this (as this news article again shows); a judge absolutely wouldn't be able to.

NB: Current SCOTUS seems to just do whatever the heck they feel like, flaunting all plausible readings of a given law, deference to expertise, and precedence (e.g. how modern SCOTUS opinions often write that Stare Decisis is meaningless – saying that it matters "unless it was wrongly decided" is a euphemism for "it does not matter", of course). So specifically modern day SCOTUS? They seem to think they are beyond the law. It also shows how I really, really don't think you _want_ a court to think itself a court of justice, meeting out excessive punishments because they feel that is just, and letting defendants clearly guilty of egregious acts go free or nearly so for some imagined reason. It also means that any clash with the law has utterly unpredictable consequences. By definition, minimum and maximum penalties clash with the notion that a court is 'a court of justice' instead of 'a court of law'.