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This recent phenomenon is interesting to me because a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach.
by detourdog 2mo ago
This recent phenomenon is interesting to me because a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach.
- alphazard 2mo agoNot sure why your comment is being downvote. That is in fact the best explanation for what is going on here, and the outcome has little to do with the competence of the prosecutor, as is perhaps alluded to by the original comment. It's good to see individuals on a jury acting according to rational self-interest.
- gorgoiler 2mo agoDo we know that to be the case? This could just as likely be an incompetent prosecutor showing up with inadequate or invalidated evidence and the jury throwing the case out on grounds of procedural incompetence rather than sympathy.
- detourdog 2mo agoI don’t know it for a fact but the prosecutors apparently had video evidence and sales receipts. I was definitely projecting my own feelings on the grand jury response.
- ludicrousdispla 2mo agothat sounds exactly like "a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach"
- mbrameld 2mo ago> just as likely If you look at the success rate of prosecutors getting grand juries to indict, it's certainly not "just as likely".
- senordevnyc 2mo agoThe stat is very high, but that doesn’t tell you anything about why grand juries don’t indict in the small percentage where they don’t, nor why they elected not to here.
- LordDragonfang 2mo agoReal life events are rarely monocausal; it's not one "rather than" the other, instead it's almost certainly a combination of both (and other factors besides). Especially with (as several other commenters who pointed out) how rare a lack of indictment is.
- wang_li 2mo agoNot real recent. Nullification like this goes far back. It just requires a certain level of bias across the jury pool. After which, some people or companies will be unable to be protected by criminal law.
- dreamcompiler 2mo agoAs others in this thread point out, this is not nullification. Nullification is a different thing and grand juries cannot do it.
- john01dav 2mo agoWhy can't grand juries do it? I thought that it's when juries intentionally rule against what the law says, while saying otherwise, as a consequence of juries not being able to be penalized for their ruling. I don't seen any reason that the same can't happen with a grand jury. A web search comes up with articles saying that it's more common with non-grand juries, but that's not the same as "cannot do it", while they also speak about a prosecutor's ability to re-indict, but that still doesn't guarantee them a charge.
- detourdog 2mo agoIt may have to do with the state of accusations. Pre-grand jury there is no evidence of a crime. Once a grand jury rules with the prosecutor a crime has been defined.
- woodruffw 2mo agoNullification is based on a contradiction in terms: juries cannot be punished for the judgments they render, and prosecutors may not re-try a case to obtain their preferred outcome (“double jeopardy”). With a grand jury, the second term doesn’t apply: the grand jury’s decision doesn’t prevent a second indictment. So in other words: grand juries can choose to render “faithless” decisions, but they can’t nullify a case in the sense that matters.
- Sohcahtoa82 2mo ago
- abirch 2mo agoThis is why it's important for us to show up and do jury duty even if it's not sexy. You can make a difference.
- philistine 2mo agoThis attitude can be a strong precursor to positive change. In Canada, Dr. Morgentaler performed abortions in Montréal, and prosecutors were unable to compose a jury of enough people who would return a guilty verdict for any abortion. So it created an untenable situation for the government, who had no choice but to let doctors completely break the law until they were deemed unconstitutional against the newly penned charter.