Philip Welch wrote:
On Jul 9, 2006, at 5:34 AM, Matt Brown wrote:
Jury
nullification does not
involve a judge or some other higher authority nullifying the decision
of the jury. Jury nullification refers to the ability of the jury to
reach a verdict contrary to the law and the instructions of the court.
Fans of the concept like to cite John Peter Zenger's acquittal on a
charge of libel as an example of this.
Exactly right, to the best of my knowledge. The American legal system
and others like it treats this as an unfixable bug in the jury system;
despite all exhortations to the contrary, the jury can reach any
conclusions it likes for whatever reason it wishes. Some activists
and others, however, try and push the idea that juries' ability to
ignore laws they disagree with is a feature, not a bug.
Juries under the American legal system cannot be held accountable for
their decisions in any way. (As I recall, this may be a holdover from
English law.) There was one case in colonial America where a colonial
journalist, Zenger, was tried for sedition and libel for certain
things he published about the governor of New York Colony. In
addition to establishing the American precedent that truth is a
defense to libel, this trial was also an early example of jury
nullification--the laws as written and established by precedent led
to a guilty verdict, but the jury refused to convict.
Jury nullification also reduced the effectiveness of the American
prohibition of alcohol. Similarly, juries in African-American
communities have apparently been known to acquit black defendants of
certain crimes (particularly drug crimes) in response to perceived
racism on the part of the police.
When I pointed out the real meaning of jury nullification I certainly
had no intention of starting a racially charged digression. While the
possibility of disparate enforcement of the law along racial lines is
certainly a serious issue, I've never heard that African-American juries
regularly acquit criminals on the basis of race. The only case I know of
is O.J. Simpson, assuming you believe him to have been acquitted in
contradiction to the facts, and even then there's a significant
celebrity element to consider in addition to race. (Please note, a hung
jury because of one recalcitrant juror is *not* an acquittal, the
defendant can easily be retried. The primary reason jury nullification
would be effective is because double jeopardy prohibits appeals or
retrials from an acquittal in a criminal case.)
Otherwise, to find actual examples of racial jury nullification I think
you have to look at the *white* juries, during the early years of the
civil rights movement and going back to Jim Crow times, that acquitted
whites of various violent acts against African-Americans and their
allies. The problem has subsided and recently it has been possible to
secure convictions for some long-ago atrocities, but this explains why
some of jury nullification's most ardent advocates are found in the
political fringe where white racists, survivalist militia groups, and
radical "constitutionalists" meet.
That's all I'll have to say about this, since the discussion no longer
directly relates to Wikipedia.
--Michael Snow