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Jury nullification (basically what you're referring to here) was a major justification of juries in the first place as it was thought to be a check on state pow
by bluedanieru 15y ago
Jury nullification (basically what you're referring to here) was a major justification of juries in the first place as it was thought to be a check on state power, but of course the state has neutered it over the last century along with most other checks on its power. Jury nullification is mostly a memory at this point and juries are generally instructed only to consider whether the defendant actually broke the law as such - not whether the law itself is just.
- derleth 15y agoRemember that jury nullification was often used to acquit whites of killing blacks in a time and place when killing a given black could often have been seen as something akin to shooting a raccoon or other vermin. (This is why violating someone's civil rights is a Federal offense in modern American law: Homicide is a state offense, and the juries in the relevant state courts of that era would not convict for certain kinds of homicide. Federal courts were not nearly as prejudiced.)