Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.
Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.
Too many jurors… don’t know about jury nullification.
Jurors are expressly prevented from being educated on the third option to avoid its use.
In this case, it is because jury nullification was originally used by racists to give white murderers a pass for killing black people.
Yes, jury nullification can have positive uses, but also terrible ones.
That isn’t the reason why courts are keeping it seceet
So make sure everyone knows about how to use it for good.
It wasn’t originally used that way but it does illustrate the point
Judges and Lawyers hate nullification not because they’re snooty elitists who hate us uppity commonfolk knowing our options,
It’s because juries that know about nullification are a lot more likely to go ahead and do it, which basically amounts to a legal form of poisoning the jury.
Judges and Lawyers are expecting to be able to argue the case based on the law as a given and that becomes pretty challenging when you now also have to explain to the jury why they shouldn’t decide the law being discussed should be thrown out for this case.
It turns the justice system from hypothetical rule of law to mask off rule of societal biases and that would be MUCH WORSE for the justice system than the present alternative.
Consider how bad the justice system is at taking rape cases seriously already, and now consider that with the defense being able to hit the jury with every rape culture "you don’t want to ruin his life over this!" rhetorical dungheap imaginable because he knows there’s no consequences for inducing a jury to nullify and the jury knows that even if the rapist is guilty they can decide to just ignore that if they like the cut of his rapist gib enough.
Only after they’re empaneled. There’s nothing preventing the education of jurors on the subject beforehand…
You’re not wrong, but when you get selected for jury duty the selecting lawyer will make inquiries about your knowledge on the subject and disqualify you if you admit knowing about it.
If you bring it up to the jury, that can also have you disqualified as well as anyone else the lawyers think were influenced by the discussion.
The third option is supposed to ‘naturally’ occurr, as in the jury agrees that the law was broken but the situation is so ‘outside the scope of the law’ that the law can no longer be applied. (IIRC the judge can overrule the jury in this case, but it can be a pain)
Essentially it’s up to the judge to determine whether the jury’s conclusion is within the realm of the ‘third option’.
Yeah. That’s why people, who could be jurors, should be generally educated on the subject.
I was trying to be subtle.
This actually is a great example of jury nullification. From https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-nullification-faq/what-is-jury-nullification.html talking about a different case:
So when these potential jurors said they wouldn’t fine someone for feeding the homeless, it’s one brick in the wall. Get enough bricks and all of a sudden the law is unenforceable.
This is an excellent writeup, thank you.