Because the American justice system doesn’t care about justice

How is this even a question? If you believe someone is good and they decided to do something against the law but for good reasons, are you going to punish that person? We know rules are important in society and we all aspire to be good citizens but sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we have to abandon our principles or break the law. Nobody is obeying the speed limit when carrying a dying child to hospital and nobody is condemning that person for breaking the law, to give a completely fatuous example.

The reason jurys convict ethically sound defendants is the same reason people fail to make the ethically sound choice in the Milgram experiment.

It doesn’t matter what the legal statutes say, you still have to think for yourself and others to make compassionate choices.

They don’t want you doing it. It’s the one last way you, as a citizen, can scrape a shred of authority away from a government hell-bent on doing things the citizens may dislike or disagree with. As long as people can be jurors then it will continue to be a level of power the government cant take away from you.

Jury Nullification arises from the constitution’s guarantee of the right to a jury trial. This guarantee creates one of a few constitutional obligations on the individual: The obligation to judge your peer, as a layperson.

The judge has a slightly different duty, due to “Separation of Powers”. The judge is charged with enforcing legislated law. The judge is not permitted to evaluate whether that law should or should not exist; the judge must presume that the law is valid unless it conflicts with a superior law, such as the constitution. This is why the judge must treat nullification as a secret: They violate the separation of powers as soon as they tell the jury they are free to ignore legislated law.

You, the juror, are not subject to the separation of powers. As a member of “We The People”, the Constitution derives its powers from you, not the other way around. Your duty, as a juror, is to provide the accused with their right to be judged by a jury of their peers.

Your obligation arises from the Constitution, and to the accused. Where legislated law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution supersedes the legislated law. Where you, as a layperson, believes that the legislated law does not adequately address the circumstances of the accused, you are not just “allowed” to find the accused not guilty; you are morally obligated to do so.

You will be asked if you hold any beliefs that would prevent you from rendering a judgement solely on the basis of the law, which would make you ineligible to serve on a jury. The constitution is law. My beliefs arise from the constitution, and I hold no beliefs that would prevent me from rendering a judgment on the basis of anything other than the law. I can honestly answer “No”.

If jurors can ultimately do whatever they want, what stops them from using nullification all the time?

We don’t actually know how often juries nullify. It is impossible to distinguish between an acquittal on the basis of “Reasonable Doubt” and an acquittal on the basis of “This law did not envision this defendant’s specific circumstances”.

So I can pitch in here. I was a juror on a trial where jury nullification was talked about. Multiple potential jurors did bring up jury nullification and the final jury contained some members who openly stated that they believed in jury nullification.

The judge and the prosector actually didn’t really care that much - the judge just asked the juror something along the lines of “ok, but do you think you can stay impartial for this trial?”, and if the juror said yes, they were on the jury. And the prosecutor didn’t dismiss anyone.

My understanding is that both the prosecutor and the defense get 10 freebie dismissals - they can dismiss up to 10 potential jurors for any reason. If the prosecutor wants to maximize the chances of getting a guilty verdict, they may potentially try to use those freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who know about jury nullification. But it seems like, at least in my case, knowing about it (or even openly stating that you believe in it) doesn’t automatically disqualify you.

The defense started talking jury nullification halfway through the trial (it was a wild trial), and that was where the judge drew the line. His reasoning was that the it was the judge’s role to instruct the jury on their job and role, so the defense cannot instruct the jury on their own about what to do. So it seems like you can talk about jury nullification, just not if you’re the defendant.

As for why jury nullification isn’t commonplace, the prosecutor will try to convince the jury that the defendant deserves punishment. It doesn’t matter if you believe in jury nullification if you also believe that the defendant deserves to be in jail. If the prosecutor doesn’t make a convincing argument, then you’d just vote innocent and that’s not really jury nullification. So there’s really quite a long criteria for jury nullification to occur:

1. The jury knows about and believes in jury nullification
2. The jury disagrees with a particular law or case but also isn’t emotionally charged enough about it so as to remain impartial
3. The prosecutor doesn’t use their freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who might be willing to do a nullification
4. The jury believes that the law was broken, but is also unconvinced that the defendant deserves punishment

Pretty simple. A jury is 12 rrandom-ish people (ignoring the Voir Dire process where lawyers argue about who deserves to be on the jury).

If you openly are for jury nullification, then the prosecutor will try to throw you out in the Voir Dire proces (its unfair to the prosecutor if you think that you can ignore the Prosecutor’s argument entirely). Then they select someone else to be part of the jury.

Secondly, all 12 members of the jury have to agree on the decision. So all 12 of you have to agree that the law is unfair in this case and opt for jury nullification instead. There’s examples where this happens: ex a child gets charged for child pornography when they send a picture of themselves. After all, they “distributed child porn” which is grossly illegal by the law, but the jury can agree “Yeah, they broke the law but don’t deserve to be punished in this case”. That’s the kind of thing jury nullification was created for, when everything is “technically correct”, but the jury is smart enough to realize that its not “Truly a crime”.

Now people bring up the Jury Nullification as a potential… erm… way to get someone out of a murder case. Highly unlikely that you’d get all 12 people agreeing on that. At best, you’d probably get a hung jury if say, 2 or 3 people agreed ahead of time to use jury nullification.

Furthermore, by showing that you’ve got “interest” in a case means that you’re no longer a random person off the street, but instead someone who may have been misinformed by media about a case. A jury must be ignorant about the case and have an open mind for the trial process to work at all. So people with pre-existing knowledge about cases are often thrown out during Voir Dire. This is because many pieces of evidence are often determined to be illegal. (Ex: if the police illegally wiretapped you, then the evidence CANNOT be shown to the jury, even if the wiretap was published in the media). So the evidence that shows up in court is itself part of a large process and selective ignorance is in fact key to the whole shebang. (How else can you punish a prosecutor for illegally obtaining evidence? Even if the evidence is true, it must be struck out of the record and the prosecutor is not allowed to use such evidence in their case).

its not an official spelt out thing but more a right that arises from the peer jury system.