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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

#291

Post by shadowgovt »

masklinn wrote: post #191
spoonjim wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I think the real measure of who that 0.25% is though, are the ones where if someone McElroyed you, an entire town of 40 people would stay silent about it.

In the south it used to be an entire town of hundreds would show up for a lynching and take pictures and a picnic below the tree. Emmett Till’s river site memorial plaque had to be replaced by a bulletproof 500lbs one to slow down its vandalism. In 2019. Before that it had to be replaced 3 times, once because it was removed and tosse in the river, and the other 2 times due to damage from being shot at. It had been fi…

It's really worth noting how much the nature of law in the US changed after the Civil War. So much so that you can think of post-1868 US as a fundamentally different country, legally, than pre-1868. The big change is that the Civil War demonstrated the shortcomings of state-level interpretation of law, and with the 14th Amendment, a wide swath of such interpretation was barred.

And, indeed, plenty of people think the old way was better. Why they think the old way was better is always worth observing with a critical eye.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#292

Post by carlivar »

whimsicalism wrote: post #235
parkingrift wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One person, who is typically elected. And that's if federal authorities decide to not get involved.

Or subject to recall. Which is what just happened to San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#293

Post by tzs »

bombcar wrote: post #4

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

The vast majority of juries in the US do not know about nullification nor do they discover it on their own. Unless you are claiming that juries are pointless in almost all cases in the current system, observation suggests that nullification is not a prerequisite to non-pointless juries.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#294

Post by zaphar »

rjbwork wrote: post #275
credit_guy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a description of the legal system as a whole. It does not pursue justice, it merely seeks to enforce the laws as written. And I think it's pretty clear that our laws do not seek justice. For, how can locking up a man - a man who has not yet reached his 20th birthday - for years on end in a concrete box for the "crime" of consuming a plant be just?

Justice is the job of the people. We vote, directly or indirectly, on the laws as written. And in the case of jury nullification can bypass the law completely.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#295

Post by michaelt »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #231
_8j50 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, judges have no obligatons to be just or fair. They just have to interpret the written law and precedent law as well as legislate themselves by way of precedent. Justice means to correct wrong and make it right. The law is written such that judges can apply their interpretation of it with no obligation towards reason or implied rights and wrongs by the legislature. Take asset forfeiture for example, th…

> Doesn't matter, judges have no obligatons to be just or fair. Yeah, they are. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/453 > The legislature can't even stop companies from being treated as persons which any sane person will tell you is unreasonable or illogical. I've never gotten why people are so opposed to the idea of corporations being treated as unnatural persons for certain purposes. Companies are owned and…

> I've never gotten why people are so opposed to the idea of corporations being treated as unnatural persons for certain purposes.

When people talk about corporate personhood, they're almost certainly talking about Citizens United v. FEC which allows corporations to make unlimited donations to politicians because it's 'free speech' - a decision that opens the door to unchecked bribery.

They oppose this because they don't want their politicians to accept bribes.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#296

Post by nisegami »

netheril96 wrote: post #242
whimsicalism wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person, who is typically elected. And that's if federal authorities decide to not get involved.

If the whole community believes X is not a crime and willing to nullify the law as juries, certainly they will elect a prosecutor who thinks the same.

That's a drastic oversimplification. For one counterexample, consider a prosecutor who believes x but also y. The community agrees on x but not y and consider that a dealbreaker, so the prosecutor is not elected. And this doesn't include issues such as ease of voting and gerrymandering.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#297

Post by tootie »

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.

DAs and police are directly or indirectly answerable to the public. Court proceedings are generally public record. Elected local governments have authority over law enforcement. See the recent case (without judging it's merits) of Gov DeSantis suspending a DA who refused to enforce abortion bans.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#298

Post by tzs »

What most people overlook when considering the power of jury nullification is that like almost all other powers of participants in our legal system there needs to be checks and balances.

The check and balance on jury nullification is not telling people that it exists. Yes, it is a pretty crappy check and balance, but no one has been able to come up with a better one.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#299

Post by toolz »

washbrain wrote: post #129
pdonis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the people who thought lynching was fine had the same sense of certainty that you have. Which all by itself is enough to refute the claim that such a sense of certainty is sufficient.

Yes, they did. But we've improved as a species. We may not recognize what our descendents will consider barbaric in our behavior, but we can be the ratchet that prevents us from repeating the barbarism of our forbears.

I don't think it's safe to assume something obviously bad today won't be good by many/most measures tomorrow. In fact I'm quite certain that the advancement of society doesn't rely exclusively on constraints, but also on expanding freedoms and loosing poorly conceived constraints.

Re: Man arrested for promoting jury nullification wins federal case

#300

Post by Hamuko »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #218
Hamuko wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is even the point of a jury composed of laymen if their only task is to decipher if a law has been broken? Surely at that point you'd only want lawyers, as in, people with a professional understanding of the law.

Funnily enough, the lawyers present in the courtroom routinely arrive at a disagreement on this point. For some mysterious reason, the lawyers hired by the accused will routinely find that no law was broken, whereas the lawyers hired by the accuser will routinely find that laws had been broken. So perhaps your suggestion of lawyers deciding on verdict has some issues?

>So perhaps your suggestion of lawyers deciding on verdict has some issues?

As far as I know, bench trials are successfully conducted throughout the world.

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