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In general no, parties have pretty wide latitude to file motions. If the law doesn't permit the request, the remedy is just that the court rejects it. That's th
by mjn 12y ago
In general no, parties have pretty wide latitude to file motions. If the law doesn't permit the request, the remedy is just that the court rejects it. That's the basis of the adversarial system; parties are expected to try to make any argument in their favor they can possibly come up with, and the court's job (or jury's job) is to weigh them. So it's disfavored to punish someone who makes a losing argument beyond just the fact that they lose the argument. In rare cases an attorney can be sanctioned for lawyering way out of line ("Rule 11 sanctions"), but that usually requires a pattern of over-the-top behavior, ignoring the court's instructions, repeated frivolous arguments, etc.
- javajosh 12y agoThat's too bad. I would assume that the USG would be held to a higher standard - but IANAL.
- gohrt 12y agoThe government does plenty of plainly illegal behavior, which we should work on fighting, before worrying about whether "grey area" behavior should be legal.
- couchand 12y agoMinor clarification: the role of a jury is not to rule on the merit of a motion such as this, but rather to decide the facts of a case. The presiding judge is responsible for deciding the law.
- tga_d 12y ago"the role of a jury is not to rule on the merit of a motion such as this, but rather to decide the facts of a case" I don't think that's correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
- dragonwriter 12y agoJury nullification has nothing to do with ruling directly on the merits of a motion of the type at issue here. It might involve indirectly considering the merits of a loosely-simialr motion in the course of rendering a criminal verdict, but even that wouldn't apply to this specific motion in its context, since that was not a criminal case.
- rosser 12y agoMotions like this aren't decided by juries, and are orthogonal to Jury Nullification.
- superuser2 12y agoJury nullification is an artifact of the existence of trial by jury and the prohibition on double jeopardy. It's inevitable that juries can effectively decide law, but it is not their purpose or role.
- gnaritas 12y agoJury nullification, i.e. deciding on the law itself is a right of juries. It is not true that juries can only decide the facts of a case.
- jrs235 12y agoJury nullification affects only a single case. It does not affect or determine the law. A side effect is that it may cause prosecutors to stop enforcing certain laws and/or cause the legislative branch to reconsider a law and rewrite it or get rid of it.
- gnaritas 12y agoI didn't say it determined the law, and of course it affects only the single case. The point is they're allowed to make their decision based on whether they feel the law itself is just, not just on the facts of the case.
- couchand 12y agoAnd I didn't say the jury can't make such a ruling, only that it isn't their role. Which it isn't. Technically I suppose they are "allowed to" in that they aren't explicitly barred from doing so, but really that's just taking advantage of a privileged position.