Jury Nullification

[catlover]

No, but a libretarian might, and vice versa. That's why we all need to know our rights.

[Lottery Larry]

[ QUOTE ]

I wish in my trial more of the jurors understood their rights. I actually had a juror say to me on the street after the trial, "We wanted to acquit you but we felt the judge gave us no choice." All I could do was just shake my head.

http://www.fija.org//index.php?page=...ytxt&id=31


[/ QUOTE ]

I saw no legal documents/decisions on that site to verify their claims about juror freedoms.

I did find this, however:

"The issue of restoration of our heritage of jury nullification--the right of the jury to judge the validity and morality of the law as well as the facts under which a defendant is being tried--was raised as early as the 1979 Montana Libertarian Party convention.

In the interests of personal liberty, Larry Dodge, former Chair of the Montana Libertarian party, decided to educate the American people of this available but unused right. He also conceived of the Fully Informed Jury Association/Act/ Amendment (FIJA). "

So, how do I verify that this isn't just a Liberatarian argument?

Also, what trial of yours are you talking about?

[Jay Cohen]

I was prosecuted and convicted for running a legal offshore sportsbook. See US vs. Cohen.

Here is an interesting column that references a few cases on jury nullification.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163877,00.html

[slavic]

Your case made for a lot of interesting reading, I thought the conviction was to be expected considering earlier versions of gambling laws and the mexican lotteries but reading the decision should be required reading for most gamblers.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

If you don't agree with the law, you have the power to return a verdict of "not guilty". And if you do, no one can do anything to you afterwards.

LOL. In theory, you are correct. And with respect to gambling, you're probably safe from those times theory and practice diverge.

I recall once being empaneled on a jury in Boston for a drug trial. When the judge asked if anyone there felt unable to render an impartial verdict, I was one of many who raised my hand. I was the only one she did not call up to the bench to privately explain. She most likely saw a middle-aged guy in a business suit and just assumed I'd be prejudiced against a yound black defendent in a drug case. The opposite, of course, was true.

Later some LP friends of mine chastised me for not keeping my piece and destroying the State's case. I did so for 2 reasons.

1) Regardless of how I feel about specific laws, I respect the system.

2) I lived in Boston at the time. I thought it imprudent to have the Boston police know me as a person who screwed a bust for purely political reasons.

A friend of mine in the legal profession later confided that the Boston Police would have made my (and my family's) life pretty uncomfortable had I obviously screwed with a drug case.

[goodgrief]

Jury nullification clearly doesn't work. The 400,000 plus folks in prison for marijuana related crimes are proof of that. After all the noise and hubbub, turns out smoking pot doesn't cause lung cancer after all. Has even one prisoner been released as a result of this science?

It is a cold fact that under the U.S. constitution, the only way to legally deprive someone of his liberty and make him a slave is to convict him of a crime. Since slavery is profitable in a country where prisons are run for profit and their shares traded on the stock exchange, then creating prisoners is the new way to make slaves. I see them every day, working for nothing or for pennies, in my town. And my town boasts that it has saved six figures in landscaping costs alone by using prison (slave) labor. One small town. Think about it. The incentive is therefore to create more crimes in order to have more slaves. If making online poker a crime creates a new class of healthy young male slaves, then why would they not do it?

I am an older lady. I have seen the world change. When I was a teen, I could have sex with an adult and my partner not be put in prison. I could smoke dope at the busstop and all that would happen is people would call me a stoner. Today, there is too much profit in making prisoners of the so-called child molester and the so-called drug user. I hate to be so pessmistic but it seems to me that doors are closing every day. There is just too much profit in making slaves and getting their labor, for years, for free.

Jury nullification is a dream. Most jurors have to live in their community. As the Boston poster said, he couldn't step up and nullify. He had to declare himself. We try to save ourselves and our own families first.

[Lottery Larry]

well, that was an interesting interpretation.