Jury Nullification
This cluster centers on discussions of jury nullification, including its purpose as a feature of jury trials, why judges often prevent jurors from learning about it, and its practical role in delivering verdicts beyond strict legal interpretation.
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Jury nullification is not a side effect, it's the whole point of having a jury trial.
Juries are supposed to work the same way[0], in practice judges will throw you out of court if you tell the jurors about it.[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
It's a travesty that juries don't have a voice in a trial. It benefits no-one.
It's a bit controversial whether jury nullification is an actual right or whether it's just a side-effect of the fact that juries can't be punished or held accountable for their verdicts. What's the difference? Well, for instance, judges tend to instruct juries only to consider the facts and not the law, and attorneys aren't generally allowed to discuss jury nullification in their closing arguments. On the other hand, the jury will rule however it decides, so lots of things from the merit of the
>You're not wrong, but I would have a hard time as a jury memberWhich is why Jury selection usually removes people who understand the situation.
In the US the he jury is not tasked with interpreting what the requirements of the law are or tasked with producing/deciding allowed evidence on the case. In these matters the judge will run the court proceedings to produce allowed evidence + arguments and separately instruct the jury on matters of the law pertaining to the case. The role of the jury is just to weigh whether the evidence presented to them seems strong enough to meet the balance of probabilities or be beyond a reasonable dou
The vast majority of juries in the US do not know about nullification nor do they discover it on their own. Unless you are claiming that juries are pointless in almost all cases in the current system, observation suggests that nullification is not a prerequisite to non-pointless juries.
This is why things are decided by juries. You may well truly believe this all seems unrelated and above board. But very few people will agree with you when presented with these facts, and it would be hard find them during a jury selection.
Juries can nullify laws; not so judges. And even juries are often not told about this ability of theirs.
this is exactly the kind of thing that juries resolve all the time.