Jury Nullification: More Definition

An IllAdvised Opinion on Jury Nullification in all its senses

I made a rather bold statement in my other post, stating that every jury trial is, in one sense or another, an act of jury nullification. I explained some of that in that post, but I think it would be good to go over the ‘depth’ of that issue here.

The basic act of ‘jury nullification’ consists of a jury ‘nullifying’ the law by finding a person innocent who clearly violated the law. However this act is not so simple as it sounds. Let’s look at various applications:

1) The most extreme case might be when the judge instructs the jury as to the law, states that the defendant clearly has violated the law, states the jury may not judge the law, states they must find him guilty, and they… find him innocent.

2) The next might be when the judge instructs the jury as to the law, states that the defendant clearly has violated the law, states the jury may not judge the law but may judge the facts, and they find him innocent and clearly say it was because they disagreed with the law.

2b) Or say it was the law ‘as applied’.

2c) Or don’t say, but it was.

3,4,5,6) Then you take all of the above factors and mix them up and delete one or two until you have all the possibilities with those factors

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7) Then you have the case where the prosecutor doesn’t even decide to prosecute because ‘no jury would convict’.

8) Then you have the cases (unfortunately far fewer than they should be) where the prosecutor doesn’t bring the case because ‘it isn’t worth the effort’.

9) Then you have the mere fact that every jury trial slows down the system, and thus helps prevent some prosecutions.

Take all that and you have a good taste of what I mean when I said that every jury trial was a case of jury nullification. And, I would add, every modern jury trial is a case of the powers that be attempting to prevent jury nullification. The prosecutor certainly, and usually the judge as well, does their best to limit what knowledge the jury can have to the knowledge they want them to have, so that the jury will do what they want… instead of their job.