Really?
A San Jose jury acquitted William Lynch of criminal assault, despite his admission that he had beaten a former priest who had molested him as a child. After the acquittal, Lynch was cheered outside the courtroom.
Lynch told reporters he fully expected to be convicted, but had hoped that his testimony would call more attention to the child abuse problems in the Catholic Church. He visited his victim, Rev. Jerold Lindner, at the retirement home where he now lives. The 65 year-old who allegedly molested Lynch and his younger brother in 1975 was confronted by Lynch, and when he told Lynch that he didn’t remember him, Lynch attacked him and “beat him almost to death” according to witnesses.
Your Ethics Alarms Quiz question:
Was the jury verdict ethical?
It certainly wasn’t legal. Juries are not supposed to ignore the evidence and make up laws as they please. Under the law, Lynch was guilty as charged. There were multiple witnesses; he confessed.
Yet jury nullification has a long history in American jurisprudence. Sometimes the law works unjustly, and the jury has the power to decide in such cases that a law shouldn’t be enforced. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in Horning v. District of Columbia, 249 U.S. 596 (1920), “The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” The question is, when is it ethical to use that power? When the result would be cruel or appear unjust? When the law itself is “tyrannical,” the classic formulation of the need for the nullification option? How much leeway do we want a jury to have in defining “tyrannical”? Jury nullification was long used in the segregated South to free those who killed or assaulted blacks; the civil rights laws were regarded as tyrannical.
You can guess my answer by now. Lynch’s jury was wrong, and did the justice system a great disservice. William Lynch, victim or not, had no right to take the law into his own hands. He was a vigilante, and the fact that he says he was a victim of child abuses excuses nothing. Would the jury have acquitted him if Lindner had died at his hands? Where was Lindner’s trial? When did he get his chance to tell his story, and confront his accusers in a court of law? This jury sentenced him to a beating—cruel and unusual punishment, forbidden in every state—- as punishment for a crime that was never proven.
This was an illegal verdict and a thoroughly unethical one that stands for the principle that if an individual has a grievance that makes him sympathetic enough, the laws don’t apply to him.
The jurors no doubt see themselves as virtuous. They are, in fact, accessories to a crime, disgraces to trial by jury, and fools as well.
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Facts: Daily News
Source: Daily News (2)
Graphic: Fink or Swim
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Ethics Alarms 
“Was the jury verdict ethical?”
Not only no, but HELL NO.
The jury’s verdict was absolutely perverse. The jury ignored truth about specific law for which they were responsible for finding guilt or innocence, where evidence existed beyond reasonable doubt that the law was broken. Simultaneously, the jury concluded that irrelevant evidence, plus the defendant’s testimony, proved guilt beyond doubt of a person who was not charged, not on trial, for breaking of law for which the jury was not responsible for finding guilt or innocence.
The jury’s verdict was the culmination of an orgy of medieval reparations-groupthink, a determined seizing of lowest available ground in the terrain of societal unrest. The members of the jury made themselves a proud, self-serving, self-satisfying gang of “justice”-dolers, caught-up in extolling the glories of vengeance. This was a jury that obviously considered with the utmost gravitas (that is sarcasm) the notion that “justice delayed is justice denied.” No matter how long was delayed the justice THEY felt was due, they saw it as their sovereign right to determine that such justice would not be denied, and to determine who would deliver (that is, who did deliver) that justice, blameless. (more sarcasm coming) What a shining moment in jury-rigged righting of historical wrongs! (end sarcasm)
Well, chances are rather high that none of the jurors will ever read here. So, they can just each go their merry way, keep marching merrily along as ignorantly and unthoughtfully as ever, proud of the “justice” they have served. Without ever taking the simplest, tiny, extra step of considering, for example, by their own jury-“reasoning,” how their verdict thoroughly justifies any friends, allies, or sympathizers of the old man who was beaten in the retirement home stalking THEM (the jury members and their hero) for the rest of THEIR (the jurors’ and hero’s) days – then suddenly, at a convenient and opportune moment, beating every one of THEM every bit as savagely as was beaten the man by the assailant whom they let off the hook.
With “justice” like this jury has upheld, who needs to hold a stinkin’ court?
“Lynch told reporters he fully expected to be convicted, but had hoped that his testimony would call more attention to the child abuse problems in the Catholic Church. ”
That’s the ethical thing to do. The Victim pleaded the 5th – as is his right so to do – and the verdict is the consequence of that. He was given the opportunity to testify, started doing so, then clammed up. His testimony was then disqualified.
The law is an imperfect reflection of justice, which should be the goal. It works pretty well, but is not the be-all and end-all. If you want it to be, just make jury nullification illegal. Otherwise it’s legit, hence ethical, by your own lights.
Nothing ethical about breaking the law to promote conversation. Nor is it legal to hold the 5th against a witness—it’s unconstitutional. Jury nullification is a necessary option, but is wrong when it is misused, as in the case of Emmett Till’s murder. And this case too.
“No person… shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”
He wasn’t on trial. He wasn’t compelled to testify. But his testimony for the prosecution, witnessing against someone else, was incomplete.
The statute of limitations had well and truly expired. Nothing he said could have been used against him.
I’m checking, but I don’t think prosecution is the determinating factor—one is still incriminated whether one can be prosecuted or not. An unprosecuted criminal is still a criminal.
The testimony that he gave should not be wiped because he took the fifth on other matters. I think the letter and spirit American law is against you here.
“The law is an imperfect reflection of justice, which should be the goal. It works pretty well, but is not the be-all and end-all. If you want it to be, just make jury nullification illegal. Otherwise it’s legit, hence ethical, by your own lights.”
And who decides whether a not guilty verdict is the result of jury nullification and not that the case against the defendant was not strong enough, the judge or the DA? It may be obvious in some cases but not in all.
And what happens to the jury in the case of a jury nullification? If the jury are penalised in any way for bringing in what they believe to be the correct verdict, who then would want to serve on a jury?
Well, in this case, there’s nothing to tell: the defendant was guilty, and it was nullification. It is technically illegal, because jurors take an oath that rule it out. But as you say, we can’t penalize a jury for being a bad jury. That doesn’t mean we can’t call it what it is.