Jury Nullification

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I disagree; the reputation of the US legal system is to be one of the worst world wide.

It was a good system at its time; but time moved on. Other countries have made good experiences with different approaches since decades.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I mean it's a thing that has existed since the creation of the legal system. Juries before the Revolutionary War used it to protest the power the British Government had over the colonies. Freaking John Adams talked about it when they were drafting the sixth amendment.

“it is not only [a juror’s] right, but his duty… to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

It's not a new thing. It's not some wacko fringe idea. It's a side effect of how the entire system was set up. The Judge doesn't decide the case. The prosecution doesn't decide the case, neither does the defense. The Jury does. Maybe you disagree with it, fine. But getting rid of it would involve making significant changes that, in my opinion, would push everything for the worse.

Yeah changing the law is a good goal, but that doesn't help the person who has to spend years in jail for that shitty law until that happens.

It was something that the US legal system inherited from English common law.

Indeed, one of the leading cases that established the jury's right return a verdict against the direction of the judge is Bushel's Case (1670), which arose from the jury's refusal to convict in The King v. Penn and Mead, which involved William Penn, the future founder of Pennsylvania.

This is commemorated with a plaque at the Old Bailey

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I've enjoyed this thread. It is interesting to see the British perspective on this issue. This discussion also reminds me of something I once heard about Warhammer players. British players assume they can't do it unless it's in the rules. American players assume they can unless it's forbidden by the rules.

I disagree; the reputation of the US legal system is to be one of the worst world wide.

Worst in the Western World. I don't think we are even in the top twenty worst if you include China, Turkey, Iran, Russia, etc...

 

[Sid]

We have no jury system in the Netherlands. It works just fine.
Crime rates are reasonable low. The number of inmates as well.
We leave the judging to the professionals.

 

[Kara Spengler]

A jury of random people off the street makes absolutely no sense to begin with.

FIFY

Anyone who can not think of a dozen ways offhand to get out of being on a jury is probably not trying. Which means juries are composed of either people who think the system is always right or just do not have anything better to do.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

We have no jury system in the Netherlands. It works just fine.
Crime rates are reasonable low. The number of inmates as well.
We leave the judging to the professionals.

English juries work pretty well, too (as, I would imagine, so Scots juries).

When it comes to judging facts, particularly based on live evidence, I think 12 random people, working together to decide what they're sure is true and what they're not so sure about, is a pretty good way of doing.

I don't think judging facts requires professionals. We all of us judge all the time if what someone is telling us seems plausible or not, and 12 people of different ages, genders and backgrounds, all of them bringing to the table their different life experiences and discussing things together to try to reach a consensus, seems a good way of correcting for particular biases.

The problem with professionals, at least in my experience, is that anyone working in the criminal justice system tends to become quite cynical very quickly, and particularly about defendants.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

FIFY

Anyone who can not think of a dozen ways offhand to get out of being on a jury is probably not trying. Which means juries are composed of either people who think the system is always right or just do not have anything better to do.

Hmm...I served on a jury. I didn't try to evade it. I certainly do not believe the system to be always right. I did have other things to do. I considered it a duty to be taken quite seriously. I'm sure the families of the three murdered people and the suspect's family considered it rather important. I rank it up there with voting in terms of my responsibility as a citizen.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I don't think judging facts requires professionals. We all of us judge all the time if what someone is telling us seems plausible or not, and 12 people of different ages, genders and backgrounds, all of them bringing to the table their different life experiences and discussing things together to try to reach a consensus, seems a good way of correcting for particular biases.

The problem with professionals, at least in my experience, is that anyone working in the criminal justice system tends to become quite cynical very quickly, and particularly about defendants.

The problem with juries is that they are also quite biased, and tend to flock to a certain opinion about the crime depending on the appearance of the suspect. You are looking black and charged for murder? Congratulations, the chances you will get the death penalty are much higher than with white people:

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1040&context=lsrp_papers

The majority of prisoners in American jails are hispanic or black, white they are a minority in the population. Is this all explainable only by less economical chances, which tends to a higher crime rate, or isn't there something else also going on? Does the majority of the population really commit less crimes than the minority?

Juries are black boxes. You'll never know why they think that you are guilty, you only know that you do. In case you do appeal this means that arguing against the verdict is hard, while a professional judge will give you a detailed explanation for the reasons why.

Juries are expensive; and so they do make even simple trials expensive.

Juries can be manipulated.

And of course first you need to be able to find enough jurors.

This is why I don't think that juries deciding on guilty or not guilty are a good idea; I do prefer professional judges over them any time, maybe with an advisory jury at place, if needed.

And I do prefer the Austrian way on how to deal with a jury: it's only part of the legal process, if the offense is heavy enough. Then you've got three professional judges and eight jurors. The jury only decides with simple majority guilty or not, and together with the judges on the penalty together.

If its 4:4, the culprit is being considered innocent. If the three judges all think that the decision of the jury is flawed, then they can veto it, which gives the jurors the opportunity to decide on it again. If this doesn't resolve the caveats of the judges, it is being relayed to another court.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

I tend to agree that juries are prone to bias. I, however, am really loathe to turn that decision over to one entity. We see the courts being loaded right now, here and today, with those who also have strong bias.

I guess I just trust more in 12 individuals than one. I am losing faith in even someone well versed in jurisprudence being above it all.. Bias sometimes works it way there just as easily as a jury. A jury has to come to a consensus, and if that doesn't happen a mistrial will be declared. That alone favors a reasoned verdict. Not always, of course, but it does favor it.

Imagine yourself to be a defendant who faces a judge who favors the death penalty, or any other number of personal biases. That lone single person determines your fate. Now, they are *supposed* to only look at the law, but they are human and prone to bias, just like any jury. Judges are being put in place specifically to favor one thing or another.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

This is why, if the offense is high enough, in the non juror based juridical systems there's always more than one judge; typically three.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

This is why, if the offense is high enough, in the non juror based juridical systems there's always more than one judge; typically three.

Not how it works here. You can waive your right to a jury trial and be judged solely by one judge. Those who so wish can indeed currently be judged by only a presumably qualified professional judge. In practice, it doesn't happen all that often, usually it is someone whose guilt isn't really in question, I guess in hopes of throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court, or the rare case of someone admitting completely to guilt to shorten the whole process. It seems that defense lawyers often would rather take their chances with a jury.

 

[Sid]

There is a world Justice Organization, that reports every year about the justice systems around the world
The 3 countries we are talking about did well: NL rank 5, UK rank 11 and the US rank 19 out of 129 countries.
There you go, with and without a jury one can organise a good justice system.

The list of 2018. (pdf)

 

[Veritable Quandry]

a presumably qualified professional judge

Who is almost always an elected judge who stands every 2 years. Where one of the few things that prevent an easy reelection is the phrase "weak on crime." Which means a high conviction rate and long sentences.

 

[Sid]

That's why none of our judges are elected. It is a non political job , candidates have to apply for the job and when selected, they are appointed for life.
Only when they malfunction, they can be fired. Of course they can quit whenever they like.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Something tells me countries have the judiciaries they deserve.

This is one of those days I wish we’d let the Confederacy go (with apologies to anyone who lives there).

 

[danielravennest]

This is one of those days I wish we’d let the Confederacy go (with apologies to anyone who lives there).

The South has changed a lot in the last century, as a consequence of air-conditioning becoming popular. Many people have moved here from elsewhere. But they moved to the cities, where the jobs were. As a consequence we have an urban/rural divide. The rural areas are politically backwards.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Considering the rabidly right-wing justices being appointed en-mass by our current messed up administration/senate... I would vastly PREFER TO KEEP jurors deciding verdicts as much as possible for the foreseeable future.

I've beena juror quite a few times now actually. Each time has been informative, controversial... tedious, but in the end I felt like we did our best to make sure justice was served well.

I'm not a fan of the idea of jury nullification. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons shouldn't make one exempt from the consequences... Unless there's special circumstances (which are largely already accounted for in law, ie: death/harm inflicted while acting in self defense), where the defendant was forced to commit a crime to protect themselves or others.

There are bad laws and laws with which I disagree, but as a juror, I haven't and don't feel it's my place to decide whether they're laws or not.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The problem with juries is that they are also quite biased, and tend to flock to a certain opinion about the crime depending on the appearance of the suspect. You are looking black and charged for murder? Congratulations, the chances you will get the death penalty are much higher than with white people:

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1040&context=lsrp_papers

The majority of prisoners in American jails are hispanic or black, white they are a minority in the population. Is this all explainable only by less economical chances, which tends to a higher crime rate, or isn't there something else also going on? Does the majority of the population really commit less crimes than the minority?

Juries are black boxes. You'll never know why they think that you are guilty, you only know that you do. In case you do appeal this means that arguing against the verdict is hard, while a professional judge will give you a detailed explanation for the reasons why.

Juries are expensive; and so they do make even simple trials expensive.

Juries can be manipulated.

And of course first you need to be able to find enough jurors.

This is why I don't think that juries deciding on guilty or not guilty are a good idea; I do prefer professional judges over them any time, maybe with an advisory jury at place, if needed.

And I do prefer the Austrian way on how to deal with a jury: it's only part of the legal process, if the offense is heavy enough. Then you've got three professional judges and eight jurors. The jury only decides with simple majority guilty or not, and together with the judges on the penalty together.

If its 4:4, the culprit is being considered innocent. If the three judges all think that the decision of the jury is flawed, then they can veto it, which gives the jurors the opportunity to decide on it again. If this doesn't resolve the caveats of the judges, it is being relayed to another court.

Who gets charged in the first place depends, of course, on who is most likely to be arrested for conduct the police officer considers suspicious and on what sort of charges he's arrested on.

Furthermore, as I understand it, the great majority of prisoners in the USA are in prison not because a jury found them guilty but because of plea-bargains between prosecutors and defence attorneys.

That means that the length of the sentence determined by (among other things) the details of the plea bargain, which is, in turn, determined by both the prosecutor's initial attitude to the case and by the quality of the defence attorney (an expensive private sector defender will probably get her client a better deal than would an over-worked and probably recently-qualified public defender).

Another economic pressure on defendants to plead guilty to an offence for which a jury might well acquit them would be the US' cash bail system, which can often keep impecunious defendants languishing on remand for months, or even years, if they can't afford the bail bonds required.

You may be correct about US juries, despite their very rigorous selection procedures, being racially biased. I'm just saying that the points you raise aren't really useful in assessing whether or not that's the case. It's a very difficult point to prove one way or the other -- I know of some research back in the 1980s (because I knew the researcher socially) into whether US Federal juries were swayed by the defendant's physical attractiveness (the study provided no conclusive evidence one way or the other) and that was a huge project to set up, with the Justice Department's assistance, involving running full trials several times, using actors speaking the lines from the transcript (with different actors for the defendant in each iteration) before panels of people who thought they were hearing actual live trials.

It's really not easy to research.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Who is almost always an elected judge who stands every 2 years. Where one of the few things that prevent an easy reelection is the phrase "weak on crime." Which means a high conviction rate and long sentences.

This.

Considering the rabidly right-wing justices being appointed en-mass by our current messed up administration/senate... I would vastly PREFER TO KEEP jurors deciding verdicts as much as possible for the foreseeable future.

I've beena juror quite a few times now actually. Each time has been informative, controversial... tedious, but in the end I felt like we did our best to make sure justice was served well.

I'm not a fan of the idea of jury nullification. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons shouldn't make one exempt from the consequences... Unless there's special circumstances (which are largely already accounted for in law, ie: death/harm inflicted while acting in self defense), where the defendant was forced to commit a crime to protect themselves or others.

There are bad laws and laws with which I disagree, but as a juror, I haven't and don't feel it's my place to decide whether they're laws or not.

And, this.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Who gets charged in the first place depends, of course, on who is most likely to be arrested for conduct the police officer considers suspicious and on what sort of charges he's arrested on.

Furthermore, as I understand it, the great majority of prisoners in the USA are in prison not because a jury found them guilty but because of plea-bargains between prosecutors and defence attorneys.

That means that the length of the sentence determined by (among other things) the details of the plea bargain, which is, in turn, determined by both the prosecutor's initial attitude to the case and by the quality of the defence attorney (an expensive private sector defender will probably get her client a better deal than would an over-worked and probably recently-qualified public defender).

Another economic pressure on defendants to plead guilty to an offence for which a jury might well acquit them would be the US' cash bail system, which can often keep impecunious defendants languishing on remand for months, or even years, if they can't afford the bail bonds required.

You may be correct about US juries, despite their very rigorous selection procedures, being racially biased. I'm just saying that the points you raise aren't really useful in assessing whether or not that's the case. It's a very difficult point to prove one way or the other -- I know of some research back in the 1980s (because I knew the researcher socially) into whether US Federal juries were swayed by the defendant's physical attractiveness (the study provided no conclusive evidence one way or the other) and that was a huge project to set up, with the Justice Department's assistance, involving running full trials several times, using actors speaking the lines from the transcript (with different actors for the defendant in each iteration) before panels of people who thought they were hearing actual live trials.

It's really not easy to research.

Yes, all very good points. What is wrong with our justice system doesn't begin and end with juries, but the entire process beginning with just who gets arrested and why. The overloaded system also means that people are basically forced to accept plea bargains. Far too often, those who continue to deny guilt and demand a trial end up with far worse sentences. Imagine if you are completely innocent and your life will be tied up in court for years upon years, even if ultimately found not guilty. You would then have suffered monetary injustice alongside a complete toppling of your life.