Jury nullification is where a jury ‘nullifies’ a legally correct verdict in a trial by voting against it for other reasons. In my line of work, the most frequen

Jury nullification is where a jury ‘nullifies’ a legally correct verdict in a trial by voting against it for other reasons. In my line of work, the most frequently cited instances of jury nullification was the 10 juror requirement for a verdict in the State of Louisiana. The reduced requirement (from most jurisdictions 12 unanimous jurors) was instituted explicitly to allow for ‘white’ criminal defendants to be acquitted of crimes against African-American. Following reconstruction, the jury needed to appear like it could have racially diverse individuals serve on it, so they lowered the requirement for the number of agreeing jurors required so if two African-Americans actually made it on the jury their votes would not count. The typical historical ‘example’ would be the jury finding a ‘white’ defendant not guilty of a clearly proven crime (murder, rape, battery, etc.) A more modern example would be a jury finding a defendant not guilty of possession of marijuana even though the defendant obviously had MJ in their possession.