A friend just finished jury duty in Federal court and had a difficult time reaching a verdict. It was a drug case involving transporting meth. The problem she had was that she felt the police lied and tampered with some of the evidence to strengthen their case but that they did so unnecessarily. She believed the defendant was shown to be guilty even without the questionable evidence. Her question was basically whether it was acceptable to find a defendant not guilty, in spite of believing in his guilt, in order to punish the police for lying and altering evidence? I'm curious what others think they would do in a similar situation.
[WS:] It is an interesting question, and the answer depends how one sees the role of the jury. If that role is understood simply as upholding and applying the existing laws and rules of evidence, then the answer to your question is that the jury should probably find the defendant guilty. It is so because AFIK the existing laws clearly prohibit the conduct of which the defendant was accused, and the jurors are in the position to accept or dismiss any evidence presented to them during the trial. That is to say that if there is enough evidence to convict regardless of the questionable evidence presented by the police, the jury can dismiss the questionable evidence altogether and still be able to find the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt. It goes without saying, of course, that if the questionable piece of evidence was the only element that conclusively "proves" guilt, the verdict ought to be not guilty.
If, however, one sees the role of the jury as the arbiter of what the law ought to be and selectively uphold "just" laws and nullifying the "unjust" ones - then of course the answer would depend how a particular juror sees the drug laws and the role of law enforcement in upholding these laws. From other postings to in this thread I gather that most of the lefties despise drug laws and the police and thus would refuse to convict. I may also add that I also dislike drug laws and routinely excuse myself from serving on juries for that particular reason even though I have been called for jury duty every single year since I moved to Baltimore in 1992.
However, a more conservative crowd would most likely to do exact opposite and convict on a rather flimsy evidence, simply because they side with the law enforcement rather than with the defendant. Likewise, a fundie x-tian jury may view abortion clinic attack cases in the exact same light as the lefties see drug cases - that laws protecting these clinics are immoral and thus find defendant not guilty regardless how strong the evidence is.
I may also add that if the "jury nullification" principle was to be the norm, I would have zero confidence in the justice system, both criminal and civil, because that system would be reduced to a mob rule or legal lynching. In such situation, I would be probably more receptive to the position held by the NRA that the best protection is not the legal system but the possession of fire arms, the more fire power the better.
Wojtek