[WikiEN-l] Viral swarming teenage vanity spam

[Michael Snow]

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