Jury Nullification

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 27 06:12:27 PDT 2002



>Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 05:41:44 +0200
>
>On Fri, 27 Sep 2002 03:17:34 +0000
> "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> wrote:
> jury
> > >nullification....ect....
> > >---
> >
> >
> > Why should juries be denied the privileges accorded to
> > the Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court? jks
> >
>

This is a joke; I was suggesting sarcastically that courts often don't follow the law; they "nullify." Obviously they aren't supposed to.


>
>My very limited understanding is that Judges do not have to
>instruct jurors that they can nullify--ie, it was never
>considered a "right" (the example given was that the Jury
>has the power to say flip a coin to decide guilt or
>innocence, but they don't have a 'right' to do so)

That is correct. Such an instruction is improper. There are cases vaacting jury verdicts if it is proved (which it is hard to do) that the jury decided by flipping a coing or some such.


>
>I also believe, and I'm not positive that whatever decision
>the jury makes is "final"--the Judge can't overrule the
>jurors verdict...don't quote me on that one though...
>---
>

That's right, don't quote you. A criminal acquittal is final, no other jury finding is. Either side can appeal a finding of civil liability or the lack of it, e.g., for insufficiency of the evidence (almost impossible to win); also a criminal conviction for the same. Likewise you can appeal a jury verdict as inconsistent with law, for example in one case I worked on on the district court, the defendant got a civil rights 1st AMendment violation verdict against it vacated because the jury had foiund trhat the town had violated the plaintiff's free speech rights, but the individual decisionmalker had not--however the law is that there is no municipal liability under section 1983 unless there is individual liability also.

jks

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