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Comment by pooper | Hacker News Reader

If you find me any precedent showing that I can openly discuss jury nullification without the judge throwing the book at me, I will be very indebted to you. Until then, the point stands.

They do not take kindly any effort to disrespect them. Remember, a court of law has authority because we as a society gives them this authority. Since we don't live by divine rights of kings, they do not have any claim to authority other than through us, the people. This is the very foundation of our democracy. I agree that usually this is inflammatory language but in this specific case, you must walk into court assuming they are out to get you if you discuss jury nullification.

Once again, this is not legal advice. I anal.

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Jury nullification is the negative right of not punishing jurors for their verdicts, not the positive right of jurors being able to pick verdicts that rule against laws they don't like.

We can talk all about how jury nullification allows the jury to dismiss unjust laws, but do keep in mind the oath a juror is required to swear:

   Do you and each of you solemnly swear that you will well and truly try and a true deliverance make between the United States and ______, the defendant at the bar, and a true verdict render according to the evidence, so help you God?

Threatening jury nullification is a clear violation of the oath (definitely not "a true verdict rendered according to the evidence") and the judge is well within their right to hold you in contempt of court for violating that oath.

La last bit of the oath is so jarring…

Aside from that problematic bit, is that oath performed before the jury hears the case or just before they deliberate?

I’m asking because the details of the case may themselves reveal an unjust law that the jury may feel obligated to decide against.

As always with these things, you can always ask to take an affirmation instead of an oath that omits the "so help you God". The oath is usually administered at the start of the case.

Not being able to talk about jury nullification does not mean all judges are crooks.

The reason people try to discourage “jury nullification” is because if a law is unjust, it should be removed, not be in place for certain juries to give _some_ people passes.

The law should be the law. If you allow juries to decide to give “innocent” verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.

> The law should be the law. If you allow juries to decide to give “innocent” verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.

This is the world we live in though. Imagine telling someone who is facing life in prison "tough luck but we need to fix the law first".

1. Congress is pretty much deadlocked and has been for decades.

2. This guy, Michael Flynn[flynn], received a presidential pardon.

3. Prosecution routinely uses its "discretion" on which cases to bring forward and what charges it wants to recommend. Police / law enforcement uses its "discretion" as well.

If there is any justice, either this guy should serve his full sentence or we should immediately release anyone and everyone convicted of "lying to federal agents[making false statements]" from prison declaring the insane law null and void.

[flynn] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn

[making false statements] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

Right but isn't the whole issue we have with white people walking free after crimes while black people face the actual punishment all because of this exact issue?

White college girl has weed, jury nullifies. Black unemployed guy has weed, jail.

> White college girl has weed, jury nullifies. Black unemployed guy has weed, jail.

I replied elsewhere but to tl;Dr what currently happens is:

White college girl has weed, no charges pressed.

No charges pressed because jury will nullify; it's a cycle.

Jury nullification, of a sort, actually dates back to England. One of the pressures that diminished the penalties for theft (which had crept up to "death") was that juries, seeing a young man in the box with their whole life ahead of them whose only crime was taking from some unaccountable rich boffin, found themselves unwilling to toss the man in the gallows for taking from one who had plenty.

Upon seeing this pattern emerge, the London merchant class panicked and petitioned the king to lower the penalty, lest no crimes against them be punished at all.

>if a law is unjust, it should be removed

Yeah but by the time a person is actually on trial, trying to change the law that they are facing is probably too late, isn't it? And the system is slow and is dominated by the rich and powerful subset of society, so trying to change the law may not work anyway.

>If you allow juries to decide to give “innocent” verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.

To some extent, this will happen one way or another. If I was on a jury, I would not vote to convict someone for breaking a law that I dislike. And a jury is already random in the sense that it's a somewhat random selection of 12 people who may have wildly different levels of intelligence, concern about the law, emotional states, and so on. To some extent, a jury decides randomly in every single trial whether they want to enforce something. The way I see it, informing people about jury nullification just helps to potentially win back some power for what myself and those I care about.

> a jury decides randomly in every single trial whether they want to enforce something.

Isn't that jury nullification? That's the exact thing I am saying, shouldn't happen.

They’re not deciding randomly, they are exercising their own considered judgement.

However I’m not a fan of jury nullification, as it’s a violation of the juror’s oath. I agree jurors individually can in practice give their verdict as they see fit, but advocating openly for others to violate their oaths is another thing.

The police and prosecutor already have that power, to decide randomly if they want to enforce something. What harm would a little additional capriciousness do?

So you would be pro a situation like this:

White college kid is caught with intent-to-distribute amount of weed, jury allows them to walk away even though they are guilty.

Black kid is caught with intent-to-distribute amount of weed, jury decides to enforce jail time this time.

I mean what harm would it do?

I am not from a country that uses juries, but your hypothetical situation probably happens daily already. You need only look at the statistics to see that being black (or to a lesser degree: being a man) significantly increases the odds of a guilty verdict in the USA. To stick to your drugs example, your white kid is more likely to have cocaine, and the black one crack. And one of these drugs has much more severe sentencing guidelines than the other...

Right which is why I am saying jury nullification is bad. These situations happen because of it.

> Right which is why I am saying jury nullification is bad. These situations happen because of it.

Please try to understand from my perspective. I am trying to say the privileged won't even see trial. If you are especially privileged, it won't even matter if you get convicted. See the case of Michael Flynn.

Jury nullification cannot make the situation worse. All it can do is expand the pool of people who won't have to suffer.

Remember, Congress is deadlocked. I have no hope that we will get sensible repeals like repealing the nonsense "making false statements is a felony" [false].

[false] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

> Making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001) is the common name for the United States federal process crime laid out in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which generally prohibits knowingly and willfully making false or fraudulent statements, or concealing information, in "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States,[1] even by merely denying guilt when asked by a federal agent.[2] A number of notable people have been convicted under the section, including Martha Stewart,[3] Rod Blagojevich,[4] Michael T. Flynn,[5] Rick Gates,[6] Scooter Libby,[7] Bernard Madoff,[8] and Jeffrey Skilling.[9]

This is the stupidest law I've ever heard of in my opinion. To convict someone, you have to know they were lying. If you can independently verify they were lying, how did their lying hurt the case? Law enforcement just needs to do its job and not have stuff just handed to them in a silver platter. Remember though, this common sense repeal will not happen in our lifetime. What recourse do you have left?

What’s the alternative? They both go to prison. Well shit if I can save at least one…

> I anal.

Yes you are, pooper, yes you are.

Jury nullification is not some divine right, it’s an unintended consequence of jury secrecy. It’s like going into a job interview at Twitter, and just talking about how everything is exploited by bots, and then you just complain about how you aren’t allowed free speech on the platform. Who would hire you?

Wait, bad example.

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