The Injustice of Rigged Juries: It's Routine

[John Kilduff]

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I said I thought you made a good case. I think there are times your morality should trump the law. We shouldn't put a man in jail for steeling if he steals, ala Jean Valjean, a loaf of bread to feed his family.

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Ok, so I take this to mean you believed in jury nullification...to a point. And that you believe juries should follow the law...to a point. Is that an accurate portrayal of your position?

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But, of course, this works both ways. Imagine I am on the same runaway slave jury and I believe the bible and God tells me (as many southerners argued in those days) that slavery of inferior races is the natural order of things. That equality of the races is wrong and a sin before God. Should I still be free to vote my conscience?

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Yes, because the alternative is no recourse at all for the people against government tyranny. A jury cannot have the right to vote their consciences "some of the time". But in the case you mention, would even an ardent believer in slavery be likely to vote to convict a person under the Fugitive Slave Law if he thought that person was not guilty?

[John Kilduff]

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As a mathematician, I can calculate the chance that at least one person on a jury of 12 and would prevent bad laws from being executed.

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From the first article.

He doesn't bother to tell you that if just 6% of the population does not like a law (DUI, spousal abuse, date rape), then there it would be better than 50-50 that a trial would end up with a hung jury if jurors were told they could practice nullification.

Let's let 6% run the system.

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That's actually not a bad standard when it comes to administering criminal punishment. If 6% of the people think the punishment is too severe or unjust, it probably is. So a 6% refusal rate should be a sign that something is wrong with the system.

edited: also, you say there would be better than a 5-50 chance that a criminal trial would end with a hung jury...but would that be a bad thing, considering that 80% of people in America's prisons are incarcerated for self-consensual (or consensual-with-another) crimes? That is, they did not do anything wrong TO anybody; they trangressed against nobody; they did not steal, or commit violence, or aggression, against anybody. In most cases the only person they were hurting was themselves, and the only transgression they committed was against the law: not against another person. If hung juries could become more frequent in our criminal justice system, we might have more actual justice.

[bobman0330]

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Wrong, there is no one arguing against jury selection, the prosecution can still weed out those who may be to biased from the pool...

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You don't think, "I would never convict somebody of possession, because I don't agree with the drug laws" is a bias?

Seriously?

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The point is that in jury selection the defense and prosecution should have equal opportunities. The OP is about judges biasing the pool in advance in favor of one side.

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I don't understand this complaint. The ideal goal of jury selection is to impanel a group of 12 people without any biases or prejudices that would make them unfit. How does the judge screening out one such bias affect that process? If the judge said nothing, the prosecutor would just ask each individual juror the same question, and if they said no, they would be immediately disqualified for cause.

[John Kilduff]

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Wrong, there is no one arguing against jury selection, the prosecution can still weed out those who may be to biased from the pool...

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You don't think, "I would never convict somebody of possession, because I don't agree with the drug laws" is a bias?

Seriously?

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The point is that in jury selection the defense and prosecution should have equal opportunities. The OP is about judges biasing the pool in advance in favor of one side.

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I don't understand this complaint. The ideal goal of jury selection is to impanel a group of 12 people without any biases or prejudices that would make them unfit. How does the judge screening out one such bias affect that process? If the judge said nothing, the prosecutor would just ask each individual juror the same question, and if they said no, they would be immediately disqualified for cause.

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In my opinion, the prosecutor should not be allowed to dismiss jurors for answering that they might vote their conscience. The goal of the prosecutor is supposed to be to attain justice and fairness, not to win a conviction. If the jury thinks the case or the law is unfair or unjust, the prosecutor should happily accept that since the goal of his office is to attain justice and fairness and the best way for that to be attained is to present the case to the jury and let them decide.

[bobman0330]

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That's actually not a bad standard when it comes to administering criminal punishment. If 6% of the people think the punishment is too severe or unjust, it probably is. So a 6% refusal rate should be a sign that something is wrong with the system.

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You may think 6% is the appropriate no-go percentage for a new law, but the Constitution and I feel that 50% + 1 of each house of the legislature and the signature of the President is sufficient for a new law to be passed and enforced.

We have a system painstakingly designed to ensure fair, uniform laws that respect certain fundamental rights. Thousands of people devote their entire professional lives to this system and to seeing that it produces good laws. I don't see how you can credibly argue that one individual, who presumably has no specialized knowledge of any of the issues involved, should be able to trump all that because he disagrees with the law. It's a recipe for totally arbitrary results.

Jury nullification should be a final fail-safe against a failure of the entire political process. The Fugitive Slave Act, or Japanese internment, or Jim Crow laws would be examples of this. It should not be an excuse to give one person arbitrary power to block a conviction or an acquittal for no other reason than that his ignorant, biased, or ill-considered opinion conflicts with that of the majority. Giving that sort of arbitrary power to individuals is the antithesis of the rule of law on which this country was founded.

[John Kilduff]

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That's actually not a bad standard when it comes to administering criminal punishment. If 6% of the people think the punishment is too severe or unjust, it probably is. So a 6% refusal rate should be a sign that something is wrong with the system.

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You may think 6% is the appropriate no-go percentage for a new law, but the Constitution and I feel that 50% + 1 of each house of the legislature and the signature of the President is sufficient for a new law to be passed and enforced.

We have a system painstakingly designed to ensure fair, uniform laws that respect certain fundamental rights. Thousands of people devote their entire professional lives to this system and to seeing that it produces good laws. I don't see how you can credibly argue that one individual, who presumably has no specialized knowledge of any of the issues involved, should be able to trump all that because he disagrees with the law. It's a recipe for totally arbitrary results.

Jury nullification should be a final fail-safe against a failure of the entire political process. The Fugitive Slave Act, or Japanese internment, or Jim Crow laws would be examples of this. It should not be an excuse to give one person arbitrary power to block a conviction or an acquittal for no other reason than that his ignorant, biased, or ill-considered opinion conflicts with that of the majority. Giving that sort of arbitrary power to individuals is the antithesis of the rule of law on which this country was founded.

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That power already exists in the hands of every juror. What is wrong is selectively dismissing jurors who realize this and accept the fullness of their power and responsibility.

[AlexM]

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Would you prefer that the judge instruct the jury on the concept of jury nullification?

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Yes. Jury nullification is the whole point of having a jury! It's to stop badly worded laws from applying to the wrong people and protect people from unjust laws.

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Wrong! Jury nullification is for the case where a father kills his daughters' rapist/murderer. They won't convict him regardless of the law.

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Yes, that's exactly what I said.

[AlexM]

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1 hold-out = hung jury = mistrial. Defendant may not 'walk' as he may still be incarcerated but he is not found guilty. Prosecutor brings new case. All the defense needs now is 1 juror who doesn't like the drug laws. Another mistrial. Chaos ensues.

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Yep. When unjust laws are tried via a jury, you can't get a conviction. That's the whole point of juries.

[Howard Beale]

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The thing is, that the current system is broken and all or even most of the bad laws are not going to be changed through the legislative process. More people should be aware of the power they have as jurors. Maybe if enough people were aware, we could start getting things changed at a grass-roots level, even if most of our professional politicians are corrupt, or are elitists, or pander for votes, or just don't care.

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Well, now, this is entirely different. A movement for change is fine w/ me but I don't think you get there w/ just the jury instruction that you propose.

[tolbiny]

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I don't understand this complaint. The ideal goal of jury selection is to impanel a group of 12 people without any biases or prejudices that would make them unfit. How does the judge screening out one such bias affect that process? If the judge said nothing, the prosecutor would just ask each individual juror the same question, and if they said no, they would be immediately disqualified for cause.

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If the goal of eliminating bias is not achieved then eliminating one side of a bias, but not another will actually make the results even more biased. For example if you held a hearing on abortion but eliminated anyone who was ardently pro choice but not those who are pro life then you have increased the bias of the proceedings, not decreased.