8 ms·
Can you imagine a jury of 12 all believing that what he did was not in the interests of his country?
by wisty 13y ago
Can you imagine a jury of 12 all believing that what he did was not in the interests of his country?
- mindstab 13y agoSadly that's not how your legal system works any more. I don't have the link handy but it came up here recently with that environmental activist who just got out of jail for breaking up an illegal auction of land. He thought he'd be fine but when the prosecution found that many of the jurors had received a juror's rights pamphlet out lining the basic foundations of your country like that jurys are supposed to be a social check on the laws and the social conscience they threw a fit and they with the judge 1 by 1 interviewed potential jury members and sent home anyone who wouldn't agree to follow the judges orders and interpretations of the law and just vote to convict on weather or not he broke the law, not weather the law was just or what he did was for a greater good. And so with a jury stacked against him (some may say against the original spirit of your legal system) he ended up with years in jail. Mean while in the course of trying to redo the auction they of course found that it was illegal and didn't do it. So he felt he'd saved the land and it was worth a few years of his life. Snowden faces worse and again probably a fairly stacked jury if it were to ever come to that. Tho they could also just indefinitely detain him nakedly in a micro cell in solitary etc etc etc.
- dllthomas 13y agoI think you're talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
- jhart3333 13y agoThis used to go by another name: it was called a jury.
- malandrew 13y agoDo you know where one can find an online copy of those jury's rights pamphlets?
- adrr 13y agoThis is why people shouldn't skip on jury duty and why it is as important as voting.
- jlgreco 13y agoYes, quite easily. Randomly pull from somewhere like central Pennsylvania and you probably wouldn't even need to exclude anyone from your randomly picked list.
- sigzero 13y agoYes, I can imagine it.
- rdouble 13y agoYes. Have you not been to America?
- wisty 13y agoWhen Clinton was President, yes. I guess times may have changed.
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoThat would depend on the definition of "country" used (its leadership/government or its citizens), and whether or not the jury can be convinced that the secrecy of the leaked programs was in the citizenry's best interests.
- krapp 13y agoTo be fair, what he did could be in the interests of his country and still be considered espionage, depending on the details of the case. I think a very likely opinion would be, yes, the programs he exposed were wrong and yes, he's a hero but also a traitor. I only say this because I expect the bulk of comments to this post to suggest the reason Americans might find him guilty would be narrow-mindedness or some sort of fascist tendency, but that's not necessarily going to be the case even if they do. Anti China/Anti-communist bias definitely would play a part, but the charges could possibly stick on their own merits, even if Americans are uncomfortable with the nature of what he exposed.
- baddox 13y agoYes. Very easily. I suspect that well over half of jury-eligible people would consider him a traitor.