Man charged with felony for passing out jury rights flier in front of courthouse | Hacker News Reader

Man charged with felony for passing out jury rights flier in front of courthouse

fox17online.com

2 pointsawqrre4 comments

The money quote from the comments: "He should take it to trial. Lets see how that judge likes this jury nullification flyer being entered into evidence and presented to a jury."

> Jury nullification occurs when a jury acquits a defendant, despite evidence, because they either believe the law is immoral or wrongfully applied.

Historically, "wrongfully applied" meant "victim was an uppity negro who deserved what that nice white defendant did to him".

Also, there is nothing in the nullification power that limits its use to acquitting. That same power can also be used for anti-nullification, to convict when the jury thinks the defendant should be punished despite the evidence and law saying not guilty. Historically, this too has tended to be used for racist reasons.

The typical counter to this from nullification advocates is that the judge or an appeals court can overturn a conviction when a jury uses anti-nullification to convict.

The problem with that is simple: the judge or appeals court generally has no way of knowing that it happened. In most cases, the prosecution does present witnesses and evidence and a somewhat plausible case. The judge cannot tell that the conviction was from anti-nullification rather than from the jury believing the prosecution's case.

An important aspect of a good justice system is that similarly situated defendants are treated equally. Routine nullification instructions would severely undermine that. If we require a unanimous jury of 12 to convict, then it only takes about 5% of the jury pool to believe that a given law should be nullified to result in 50% of juries having a member who will nullify.

Nullification should only be a last resort, for use after the normal political process for changing bad laws has failed. It needs checks and balances to prevent its massive misuse--and the only method anyone has been able to come up with is the hack of not telling people about it. The theory is that in the kind of breakdown of the system where it is appropriate the jury will discover it on their own.

While all of what you said might be true... it shouldn't be a felony to hand out flyers telling people what others had decided not to tell them. If the jury has a set of rights then they should be made aware of those rights, even the unpopular ones. If people feel strongly enough that a particular jury right should be revoked, then they should pursue steps to revoke it. But they really shouldn't be arresting people for passing out that information.

> If people feel strongly enough that a particular jury right should be revoked, then they should pursue steps to revoke it.

It's hard to see how the nullification and anti-nullification powers could be revoked without massively changing the role of the jury. Nullification follows from the double jeopardy rule and the jury not being liable for a "wrong" decision (except in special cases, like a juror selling their vote). Anti-nullification follows from the latter and from judges and appeals courts not having a way to detect anti-nullification.

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