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> Carla Glaser, 47, who served as a juror on a gravity-knife case in Manhattan, calls the situation “ludicrous.” She still feels sick about the conviction she w

by Lazare 8y ago

> Carla Glaser, 47, who served as a juror on a gravity-knife case in Manhattan, calls the situation “ludicrous.” She still feels sick about the conviction she was compelled to hand out, to a man who was initially stopped by police for being in a city park after nightfall. Although the law was, in her view, deeply flawed, she felt she had no choice but to vote with the majority. I wonder if she realises that she's actually culpable here? Juries should be a check on unjust laws, not an enabler of them. She had a choice; she just opted not to exercise it.

dlwdlw 8y ago
Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I suspect the entire systems subconsciously also filters FOR and AGAINST certain types of people in service of whatever the narrative of the time was. The people who speak out about injustice who have been part of the system are allies. If you expect perfect allies, then you make no change.
- black_puppydog 8y ago
  > Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I guess you mean subconsciously? Directly asking someone if they know about jury nullification, then rejecting them on whatever grounds would intuitively sound very fishy to me. Rejecting them explicitely for knowledge of jury nullification would sound to me like a direct attack on the jury system itself. And I don't know how to find out if someone knows about it without asking them... Then again, I'm not a lawyer.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    There is case law suggesting that jurors can be removed if you suspect they are going to nullify the law. There is also case law supporting jury instructions against nullification and for preventing defense attorneys from using it as a tactic. I'd go so far as to say that there is an explicit bias against jury nullification in the courts system. The wikipedia article is particularly weak on this subject, but the reference list is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_Stat...
  - lozenge 8y ago
    Juries' decisions have to be respected regardless of their reasoning, which is how "jury nullification" arose. However, they are supposed to only determine matters of fact (ie whether the defendant did something, rather than whether the law is just) and judges can deselect people who they don't trust to give an honest verdict based on fact alone. So, judges deselecting such people is actually preserving the jury system, not attacking it.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    See my other comment where a judge explicitly asked me about jury nullification. I know of no reason they can't ask, and voir dire allows both prosecution and defense the option to exclude some potential jurors without saying why.
posterboy 8y ago
Jury verdict has to be unanimous, so she had to convince the majority by offering the argument, but they are instructed to judge on the basis of the law and she likely submitted to the thought that she was unable to derive the unjustice of the law from first principles, the constitution etc. not the least because the viability of law as is, whether subjectively unfair or not is... I don't think I could, either.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  When I was on a jury I noticed that people with the strongest convictions end up winning so to speak. They make everyone understand they won't be persuaded and will drag the thing along. Everyone wants to go home to their lives so they end up not caring and just giving in eventually.
ergothus 8y ago
The only time I've been called for jury duty, they asked us various filtering questions (voir dire), one of which was "would we be able to make a decision based solely on the law itself and not circumstances or other factors?" (roughly) I didn't answer an emphatic Yes like everyone else. When the judge asked if I was talking about jury nullification, I said not as a policy and I wouldn't do so lightly, but that I can't pretend my choices don't have consequences. Shortly thereafter I was dismissed at the request of the prosecution. I was fine with being excluded, but I was horrified by the apparent difficulty most of the others had in answering basic logic questions. They asked questions like "if a legal restraining order says 'stay 1000 feet away', is someone who gets 990 feet away breaking the law?" and "what if they were doing so to help someone in danger, were they breaking the law?". Not only were people NOT applying only the (hypothetical) law, they were struggling to understand that that was what was happening. One of friends who is a lawyer says that, guilty or innocent, if ever on trial he would never choose a jury trial. Until my experience I didn't understand why.
FRex 8y ago
It's called jury nullification and it's sort of up in the air whether it's legal or oath breaking (I have no idea as I'm not American). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

by Lazare 8y ago

dlwdlw 8y ago

Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I suspect the entire systems subconsciously also filters FOR and AGAINST certain types of people in service of whatever the narrative of the time was. The people who speak out about injustice who have been part of the system are allies. If you expect perfect allies, then you make no change.

black_puppydog 8y ago
> Judges specifically filter out for people who know about jury nullification. I guess you mean subconsciously? Directly asking someone if they know about jury nullification, then rejecting them on whatever grounds would intuitively sound very fishy to me. Rejecting them explicitely for knowledge of jury nullification would sound to me like a direct attack on the jury system itself. And I don't know how to find out if someone knows about it without asking them... Then again, I'm not a lawyer.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  There is case law suggesting that jurors can be removed if you suspect they are going to nullify the law. There is also case law supporting jury instructions against nullification and for preventing defense attorneys from using it as a tactic. I'd go so far as to say that there is an explicit bias against jury nullification in the courts system. The wikipedia article is particularly weak on this subject, but the reference list is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_Stat...
- lozenge 8y ago
  Juries' decisions have to be respected regardless of their reasoning, which is how "jury nullification" arose. However, they are supposed to only determine matters of fact (ie whether the defendant did something, rather than whether the law is just) and judges can deselect people who they don't trust to give an honest verdict based on fact alone. So, judges deselecting such people is actually preserving the jury system, not attacking it.
- ergothus 8y ago
  See my other comment where a judge explicitly asked me about jury nullification. I know of no reason they can't ask, and voir dire allows both prosecution and defense the option to exclude some potential jurors without saying why.

posterboy 8y ago

Jury verdict has to be unanimous, so she had to convince the majority by offering the argument, but they are instructed to judge on the basis of the law and she likely submitted to the thought that she was unable to derive the unjustice of the law from first principles, the constitution etc. not the least because the viability of law as is, whether subjectively unfair or not is... I don't think I could, either.

rdtsc 8y ago
When I was on a jury I noticed that people with the strongest convictions end up winning so to speak. They make everyone understand they won't be persuaded and will drag the thing along. Everyone wants to go home to their lives so they end up not caring and just giving in eventually.

ergothus 8y ago

The only time I've been called for jury duty, they asked us various filtering questions (voir dire), one of which was "would we be able to make a decision based solely on the law itself and not circumstances or other factors?" (roughly) I didn't answer an emphatic Yes like everyone else. When the judge asked if I was talking about jury nullification, I said not as a policy and I wouldn't do so lightly, but that I can't pretend my choices don't have consequences. Shortly thereafter I was dismissed at the request of the prosecution. I was fine with being excluded, but I was horrified by the apparent difficulty most of the others had in answering basic logic questions. They asked questions like "if a legal restraining order says 'stay 1000 feet away', is someone who gets 990 feet away breaking the law?" and "what if they were doing so to help someone in danger, were they breaking the law?". Not only were people NOT applying only the (hypothetical) law, they were struggling to understand that that was what was happening. One of friends who is a lawyer says that, guilty or innocent, if ever on trial he would never choose a jury trial. Until my experience I didn't understand why.

FRex 8y ago

It's called jury nullification and it's sort of up in the air whether it's legal or oath breaking (I have no idea as I'm not American). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification