What are individuals, who are completing jury duty, left to do when they are faced with the situation of deciding the guilt or innocence of someone, based upon applying a law that they believe is immoral or unfair?

Maybe they are supposed to decide if someone is guilty of trafficking for example, but they don't agree that laws surrounding trafficking, that the individual is being charged with, are fair or moral because there is no victim involved in the situation. Historically, those jurors might have exercised their ability to nullify and you might be surprised to find out that nullification has taken place on many occasions over the years.

Various legal experts have stressed the importance of jury nullification in recent years, especially with regard to the ongoing war on drugs. With jury nullification, the jury has the ability to vote note guilty regardless of the evidence that might support the charges against the accused.

Some legal scholars have maintained that jury nullification is a Constitutional doctrine that allows jury members to choose to acquit those who they don't believe deserve to be punished by the state.

You can find former federal prosecutors, such as prof. P Butler from George Washington University, now suggesting that jury nullification is needed for things like cannabis arrests; the people can send a more direct message about how they feel about the war on drugs.

They have the power to save someone who is being charged with a victimless crime, from potentially spending years locked in a cage.

Critics of jury nullification have argued that it gives the jury too much power, "it leads to anarchy!" they fear, but if the government is there to serve the people as they claim, and not to serve the governors, then the people should have every right to judge the law itself along with the facts in the case that they are reviewing. This power to nullify gives power to the people to decide whether or not a law is immoral or being unfairly applied, and it can provide for a last resort to seek justice to try and remedy a corrupt system or fight back against tyrannical legislation.

Risk

While you can find various legal experts asserting that jury nullification is a jurors right, there are other instances where some jurors have been instructed by the court that nullification isn't their right and they've been told that it's a violation of their juror's oath. And those who have been caught handing out pamphlets near courts that detail information about jury nullification have also been arrested for their actions as well.

In cases where jurors have also allegedly told jurors about jury nullification and suggested that they should nullify, they've also been charged and convicted of being in contempt of court (charges that might later have been overturned on appeal) as a result of their actions; the court saw them as intending to obstruct justice by educating other jurors about the reality of nullification.

Though it has been used frequently in the past we don't hear much about jury nullification today because the majority of cases, more than 90 percent of them, result in plea bargains and don't end-up going to court for a jury to have the option to nullify.

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Related Posts:

Jury Nullification: Judging The Law Itself

New Hampshire Looks To Require Courts To Inform Juries of Nullification