8 ms·

"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nul

"Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case." I don't get it; jurors are selected based on how they claim will decide? That's all kinds of messed up.

atourgates 15y ago
Well - kind of. The idea is to find jurors as close to the "impartial" ideal as possible. So - if a murder case is being tried - and someone whose family member is a murder victim is called to the jury - they're probably not a great impartial arbiter in that case. It's called Vior dire, and certainly not unique to the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection#Voir_dire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection#Voir_dire
SeveredCross 15y ago
Jurors are selected based on all sorts of things. You'll find that jurors with higher education are often eliminated (prosecutors hate educated jurors, they tend to be harder to convince), jurors with law experience (even if it's as simple as a law class in high school) also tend to be eliminated, because they know at least a little something about standards of proof and nullification, etc. The list of things that you can be eliminated for by either the judge or one of the attorneys (who get a limited number [3, I think] of eliminations) is staggering.
adestefan 15y ago
Juries are to be impartial and decide only upon the evidence that is put forth by the prosecutor and defendant as it relates to the charges and the law that defines those charges. If a juror states up front that they'll vote one way or another, without hearing the evidence, based on some prejudice then they will be disqualified.
- colanderman 15y ago
  Juries are to be impartial But selecting juries based on that trait (or any trait for that matter) is in direct conflict with one's right to trial by a jury of his peers (presumably defined as the general populace). Once you predicate the selection process, you skew a uniform sampling of "peers" and the jurors selected are no longer representative of one's "peers". (Not arguing, just trying to understand.)
  - stan_rogers 15y ago
    The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which provides only for "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".
    - colanderman 15y ago
      Interesting. I could have sworn we learned the "jury of your peers" thing in school.
    - pash 15y ago
      The "jury of your peers" language, whose origin is the Magna Carta [1], is included in the constitutions of a number of states, so the concept directly pertains in many American jurisdictions. There is also a considerable body of federal case law applying the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the process of jury selection. Since 1880, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a black man's conviction for murder due to the systematic exclusion of blacks from local juries [1], federal courts have consistently ruled that jurors must be selected indiscriminately from eligible members of the community. This is very close to the concept of a "jury of your peers". 1. See clause 29 of the 1297 document: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_carta/translation.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_ca... ; the further origin is the first Magna Carta of 1215. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia
  - adestefan 15y ago
greyfade 15y ago
It's more likely that during interviews it became clear that the jurors knew about nullification and they were excluded from the pool for that reason. It then probably dwindled the size of the pool enough that the Judge became concerned about being able to find jurors that are unaware of nullification. The Jury selection process, from what I understand, tries to exclude anyone that might know about nullification specifically because they don't like the Jury having more social power than the Judge.
mindcrime 15y ago
It probably varies by state (or not), but the last time I was on a jury, the jury selection process went like this: 1. 12 jurors are seated. 2. the prosecution asks questions of the jurors, either as a group (eg, "raise your hand if X") or individually. 3. the defense does the same thing 4. the prosecution can excuse any jurors they think are not suited for the case 5. the defense can do likewise 6. If less than 12 jurors remain, enough new ones are seated to bring the number back to 12, and the process repeats And the questions the prosecution asks are often framed like "Is there any reason you would fundamentally be unable to return a 'guilty' verdict in this case?" or "is X a reason you would not be able to return a 'guilty' verdict?" etc. At which point, an honest person who believes jury nullification would apply here, would have to say "Yes, I would refuse to vote guilty in this case because I think the law is wrong" or whatever. Of course if you do that, you're basically asking to be excused. In my case, they never used the phrase "jury nullification" in the selection process, but they asked questions that roughly corresponded to asking about that. Also, I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many jurors each side can excuse. In the case where I served, quite a few jurors were excused by one side or the other, but we didn't come close to exhausting the pool of candidates (which was, I believe, somewhere between 50-60 people).
- colanderman 15y ago
  Thanks. I've never been on a jury so I'm totally unaware of the selection process. It seems less unfair that both sides get to excuse jurors; still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace.
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    > still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace. A jury pool has never been meant to represent a random sample of the general populace. Indeed that would be enormously counterproductive: in, say, a Klan dominated county we might expect a random sample of the county populace to turn up 9 racists in a sample of 12, but that is not a jury makeup likely to result in a fair verdict for a black defendant. All of these questioning and dismissal mechanisms exist to make sure that the jury pool is absolutely NOT 12 random people, but is instead as close to a collection of 12 people who are believed to be able to return an impartial verdict as can be reasonably managed in the opinion of the court, by balancing the concerns of both prosecution and defence council.
Cushman 15y ago
Before getting selected, they outline the case and ask if you know of any reason you couldn't be a fair and impartial juror on this case. Conflicts of interest, etc. At this point, saying "I won't convict for marijuana possession or use under any circumstances" is allowed, but could easily disqualify you depending on how the judge is feeling. Certainly the prosecutor is gonna feel some pressure to cut a deal. Yeah, it is a little weird, but it's hard to think of a way to fix it without making it potentially much more abusive.
ejames 15y ago
It's worth remembering that jury nullification is a two-way street. Nullification is most famous for its history in racially-charged trials in the American South. Southern jurors would refuse to enforce criminal laws if the accused was white and the victim black. Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War. That's one of the justifications for the power to dismiss jurors - for the sake of justice, law must also have the power to protect minorities who are very unpopular, even, and indeed especially, if the unpopularity is so severe that very few randomly selected people would agree to enforce a law on the minority's behalf. The problem, of course, is that just because there is no guarantee that nullifiers are right, it does not follow that they are wrong either. However, because jury nullification has its greatest historical significance in the United States when it was used to persecute blacks, legal doctrines which support jury nullification are, by association, not very popular, while legal tactics which allow prosecutors to make their case in the face of potential jury nullification are considered acceptable.
- wnoise 15y ago
  > Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War. Sure, but in that case it was Juries refusing to enforce the (truly odious) Fugitive Slave Acts.

atourgates 15y ago

Well - kind of. The idea is to find jurors as close to the "impartial" ideal as possible. So - if a murder case is being tried - and someone whose family member is a murder victim is called to the jury - they're probably not a great impartial arbiter in that case. It's called Vior dire, and certainly not unique to the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection#Voir_dire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection#Voir_dire

SeveredCross 15y ago

Jurors are selected based on all sorts of things. You'll find that jurors with higher education are often eliminated (prosecutors hate educated jurors, they tend to be harder to convince), jurors with law experience (even if it's as simple as a law class in high school) also tend to be eliminated, because they know at least a little something about standards of proof and nullification, etc. The list of things that you can be eliminated for by either the judge or one of the attorneys (who get a limited number [3, I think] of eliminations) is staggering.

adestefan 15y ago

Juries are to be impartial and decide only upon the evidence that is put forth by the prosecutor and defendant as it relates to the charges and the law that defines those charges. If a juror states up front that they'll vote one way or another, without hearing the evidence, based on some prejudice then they will be disqualified.

colanderman 15y ago
Juries are to be impartial But selecting juries based on that trait (or any trait for that matter) is in direct conflict with one's right to trial by a jury of his peers (presumably defined as the general populace). Once you predicate the selection process, you skew a uniform sampling of "peers" and the jurors selected are no longer representative of one's "peers". (Not arguing, just trying to understand.)
- stan_rogers 15y ago
  The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which provides only for "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".
  - colanderman 15y ago
    Interesting. I could have sworn we learned the "jury of your peers" thing in school.
  - pash 15y ago
    The "jury of your peers" language, whose origin is the Magna Carta [1], is included in the constitutions of a number of states, so the concept directly pertains in many American jurisdictions. There is also a considerable body of federal case law applying the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the process of jury selection. Since 1880, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a black man's conviction for murder due to the systematic exclusion of blacks from local juries [1], federal courts have consistently ruled that jurors must be selected indiscriminately from eligible members of the community. This is very close to the concept of a "jury of your peers". 1. See clause 29 of the 1297 document: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_carta/translation.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_ca... ; the further origin is the first Magna Carta of 1215. 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauder_v._West_Virginia
- adestefan 15y ago

greyfade 15y ago

It's more likely that during interviews it became clear that the jurors knew about nullification and they were excluded from the pool for that reason. It then probably dwindled the size of the pool enough that the Judge became concerned about being able to find jurors that are unaware of nullification. The Jury selection process, from what I understand, tries to exclude anyone that might know about nullification specifically because they don't like the Jury having more social power than the Judge.

mindcrime 15y ago

It probably varies by state (or not), but the last time I was on a jury, the jury selection process went like this: 1. 12 jurors are seated. 2. the prosecution asks questions of the jurors, either as a group (eg, "raise your hand if X") or individually. 3. the defense does the same thing 4. the prosecution can excuse any jurors they think are not suited for the case 5. the defense can do likewise 6. If less than 12 jurors remain, enough new ones are seated to bring the number back to 12, and the process repeats And the questions the prosecution asks are often framed like "Is there any reason you would fundamentally be unable to return a 'guilty' verdict in this case?" or "is X a reason you would not be able to return a 'guilty' verdict?" etc. At which point, an honest person who believes jury nullification would apply here, would have to say "Yes, I would refuse to vote guilty in this case because I think the law is wrong" or whatever. Of course if you do that, you're basically asking to be excused. In my case, they never used the phrase "jury nullification" in the selection process, but they asked questions that roughly corresponded to asking about that. Also, I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many jurors each side can excuse. In the case where I served, quite a few jurors were excused by one side or the other, but we didn't come close to exhausting the pool of candidates (which was, I believe, somewhere between 50-60 people).

colanderman 15y ago
Thanks. I've never been on a jury so I'm totally unaware of the selection process. It seems less unfair that both sides get to excuse jurors; still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace.
- msbarnett 15y ago
  > still, on average, it seems it would drastically skew the pool of jurors away from a random sample of the general populace. A jury pool has never been meant to represent a random sample of the general populace. Indeed that would be enormously counterproductive: in, say, a Klan dominated county we might expect a random sample of the county populace to turn up 9 racists in a sample of 12, but that is not a jury makeup likely to result in a fair verdict for a black defendant. All of these questioning and dismissal mechanisms exist to make sure that the jury pool is absolutely NOT 12 random people, but is instead as close to a collection of 12 people who are believed to be able to return an impartial verdict as can be reasonably managed in the opinion of the court, by balancing the concerns of both prosecution and defence council.

Cushman 15y ago

Before getting selected, they outline the case and ask if you know of any reason you couldn't be a fair and impartial juror on this case. Conflicts of interest, etc. At this point, saying "I won't convict for marijuana possession or use under any circumstances" is allowed, but could easily disqualify you depending on how the judge is feeling. Certainly the prosecutor is gonna feel some pressure to cut a deal. Yeah, it is a little weird, but it's hard to think of a way to fix it without making it potentially much more abusive.

ejames 15y ago

It's worth remembering that jury nullification is a two-way street. Nullification is most famous for its history in racially-charged trials in the American South. Southern jurors would refuse to enforce criminal laws if the accused was white and the victim black. Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War. That's one of the justifications for the power to dismiss jurors - for the sake of justice, law must also have the power to protect minorities who are very unpopular, even, and indeed especially, if the unpopularity is so severe that very few randomly selected people would agree to enforce a law on the minority's behalf. The problem, of course, is that just because there is no guarantee that nullifiers are right, it does not follow that they are wrong either. However, because jury nullification has its greatest historical significance in the United States when it was used to persecute blacks, legal doctrines which support jury nullification are, by association, not very popular, while legal tactics which allow prosecutors to make their case in the face of potential jury nullification are considered acceptable.

wnoise 15y ago
> Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War. Sure, but in that case it was Juries refusing to enforce the (truly odious) Fugitive Slave Acts.