I’ve bee watching the Brooks vs state trial, and before he makes his closing argument, the judge tells him NOT to inform the jury of their power to nullify the law.
In: 20
The judge only wants the jury to decide the case based on the evidence presented and their own reasonable judgement of the truth. That is their job, and doing anything else would pervert the course of justice.
If the judge reasonable believed that the jury were going to pervert the course of justice, either intentionally or through incompetence, they would declare a mistrial.
If a sneaky lawyer wanted to get a mistrial (to avoid a verdict that would lose the case) they might sneakily try to tip off the jury about jury nullification in their closing argument. This would not be illegal per se but they would effectively be forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.
However, when the judge has ordered the lawyer not to inform the jury of jury nullification, the lawyer would be in contempt of court if they did, and this would lead to **very** serious consequences.
Trial is a very careful and elaborate procedure and mistakes often can’t be undone, which means it’s very easy to have a mistrial if you aren’t careful. Mistrials are a huge waste of time and money because it means having to redo the whole trial again. To avoid a mistrial due to sneaky lawyering, they are very clear with their instructions to lawyers.
Judge can always perform a directed verdict if jury nullification is occurring AGAINST the defendant. The judge cannot call someone guilty though.
It’s when the jury thinks that the defendant is theoretically guilty, but the law itself is wrong and they side with the defendant against the cops.
Pros: People who commit justified murders can be let off the hook. Or people who broke outdated, bad, or nonsensical laws that haven’t been repealed because lawmakers are too busy cosplaying as kindergartners.
Cons: The Jim Crow South.
The Jury is only supposed to make decisions based on the law.
But the legal system is not allowed to see the reasons juries make a decision, and can not change that decision.
So if a jury thinks a law is unjust, they can declare someone not guilty, even if the evidence is clear that they broke that law, and the decision can never be reversed.
This is called jury nullification. It is technically not allowed, but it can happen as a consequence of hownthe legal system works.
Note that sometimes it can be used for “good”, like a jury deciding that someone should not be put in prison for life for a minor crime, but it can also be used for “evil”, like when Southern juries would refuse to convict for racist lynchings.
Bob is on trial for doing X.
You, as a juror, don’t believe X should have been illegal in the first place. There’s indisputable evidence Bob is guilty of doing X, but because you don’t believe X should should be illegal you vote “not guilty”.
This is jury nullification.
Jury nullification is the act of nullifying the law by finding a person not guilty despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary.
You can arrange a jury’s beliefs and it’s decisions around a four field matrix. The jury can either believe that the defendant is guilty, or they can believe that he is not guilty. And they can either decide that he is guilty, or they can decide that he is not guilty.
This gives four possible outcomes. A jury is supposed to only yield two outcomes; finding the defendant guilty when they believe he is guilty, and finding the defendant not guilty when they believe he is not guilty.
However, they *can* also decide to find a defendant guilty even though they don’t believe he is, or find him not guilty even though the believe he is. There are legal mechanisms to handle that first scenario, mistrials, appeals, etc, intended to make sure that wrongfully convicted people are swiftly cleared. However, there are *no* legal mechanisms to deal with the last scenario, where a jury acquits a defendant even though they believe he is guilty. That’s jury nullification.
It exists because the law states that a jury member cannot be held accountable or punished for a delivering a decision that turns out to be wrong, and because once acquitted a suspect cannot be charged for the same crime again. If jurors figure realize this, they can disregard the law, which is what the courts want them to consider, and start factoring in their opinions about a crime into the verdict. For example, a desperate man stealing medication for his dying child could be acquitted of the theft if the jury members sympathize with him and are aware that they can get away with letting him get away.
So, what’s the harm in making the judicial process a bit more humane? Well, jury nullification can be used for good or for bad. For example, it was frequently used in southern states in the 19th century to acquit lynchers who assaulted or even killed black people.
Since courts are in the business of upholding the law as accurately as possible, they prefer people being unaware of this option, and that’s probably why the judge in the trial you watched told the defendant to *not* inform the jury of this possibility.
Jury nullification means the jury understands the person is guilty of whatever crime they are accused of, but don’t want to find them guilty for whatever reason.
Jury deliberations are private and confidential. Juries are under no obligation to explain their reasoning. Add in the fact that the law allows for the convicted to appeal a verdict, but not the prosecution that means a jury can decide on a “not guilty” verdict for whatever reason they want and not have to worry about it.
Those reasons can range from the just like “Sure, the law says you can’t sleep on a park bench, but the punishment for that is 10 years in jail and when it is charged it’s ALWAYS charged against black people. That’s crazy on two levels. So even though this guy was sleeping on the park bench, I’m not going to say he’s guilty” to the unjust “Sure, he killed that kid for no reason, but that kid was a disgusting n****** so I’m sure he had it coming to him. Not guilty”
The concept is made easier when given an example. Back in the days around the civil war and just before, slaves were free in the north but being a runaway slave was still a “crime”. As such, while someone could undoubtedly be “guilty” of being a runaway slave, northern juries would still find them to be “not guilty”.
This is in essence what jury nullification is. A group of your peers finding that even though the “law” says you’re guilty, the circumstances should forgive that entirely. You can sometimes see the same thing when a jury finds a father not guilty of beating their child’s abuser to death.
Now here’s a question for those who know more than me: when a jury rule’s “not guilty” by virtue of jury nullification, do they need to notify the court that this is why they reached that decision? I know in civil court a judge can step in if the jury reaches a verdict wholly unsupported by the evidence, but I imagine in a criminal context that power would be limited only to usurping a “guilty” verdict rather than a “not guilty” one.
A jury is supposed to make a decision of “fact” only, which in a criminal trial means “did the defendant commit the crime they are accused of (as defined by the law).”
Jury nullification happens when a jury decides to vote not guilty based on something other than that, like “we are voting not guilty because we don’t like this law.”
The Scots have a similar aquittal ruling called “[Not Proven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven?wprov=sfti1)” Jury Nullification is similar but adds another layer.
A jury is expected to convict the accused if the state presents a case beyond reasonable doubt of the accused’s guilt of committing a crime.
In both US and Scotland, the Jury is expected to acquit if the defense presents reasonable doubt of guilt and if the state fails to make a case with the evidence to prove beyond the shadow of doubt of the accused innocence. That’s two acquittal states, under two names in Scotland and one in US, but US has a third acquittal.
Jury Nullification acquits the accused even if the state made a case beyond a shadow of a doubt because the Jury finds the crime and punishment to be unjust. The accused did it, but the jury let them off anyway, for one reason or another. Sometimes the jury doesn’t like the law, sometimes they don’t like the victim of the crime, and sometimes they don’t think the crime deserves punishment. In any case, for any reason, a jury can return a not guilty verdict regardless of evidence presented in trial.
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