jury nullification

Jury Nullification Ethics: Denver’s District Attorney Tries To Make It Illegal To Teach Jurors About The Power Of Juries

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

ZengerIs it just me, or does it seem to everyone as if  a lot of public officials have been trying to shrink the First Amendment lately?

Jury nullification is the doctrine, rich in jurisprudential and American history, that declares that juries have the power and the right to reject what they believe are either unjust criminal laws or unjust prosecutions, and acquit defendants who may have been proven guilty on the evidence, essentially nullifying the law by refusing to enforce it . They definitely have that power: once a citizen is declared not guilty, that citizen cannot be tried again. The dilemma is that neither judges nor lawyers are permitted to let juries know about nullification, since nullification defies the law. A defense lawyer mentioning it in a closing argument risks a mistrial, and bar sanctions. In most jurisdictions, judges instruct jurors that it is their duty to apply the law as it is written whether they agree with the law or not. In only a few states are jurors expressly permitted to judge both the facts and the law of the case. In 2012, New Hampshire passed a unique law explicitly allowing defense attorneys to inform juries about jury nullification.

In Denver this week, Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said “Juror Info” in front of the city’s courthouse. The Denver District Attorney’s Office has charged him with eight counts of jury tampering, because Iannicelli used that booth to hand out flyers about jurors’ rights to practice jury nullification to jury pool members. Yes, he has been charged with tampering with juries that aren’t even juries yet. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Here is the Comment of the Day, Eeyoure’s deliciously indignant dressing-down of the jury whose verdict was discussed in today’s post, “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”:

“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?”

Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

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? Continue reading →

From First Amendment Outrage to Ethics Hypothetical: The Westboro Baptist Church vs. Brandon, Miss. Hoax

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

"Never mind!"

Bulletin: The story about how citizens and law enforcement personnel in Brandon, Miss. foiled the efforts of Fred Phelps’ homophobic Westboro Baptist Church to disrupt the funeral of a serviceman killed in Afghanistan never happened. The source of the hoax is unclear, but an enterprising Stars and Stripes blogger investigated and has determined that it never happened. The Church was never even in Brandon.

I detest fake web stories and the people who create them, as you probably know. The public is  confused enough by reality without having falsehoods, fabrications and hoaxes added to its database. Luckily, this is not a news site, but an ethics site, and my commentary about those who applauded this tale of a community conspiring to rob a group of their U.S. Supreme Court confirmed constitutional rights is as valid as when it was widely assumed that the story was real.

The foiling of Fred Phelps’ gang by “Mississippi Burning” tactics is not only an ethics hypothetical that most people flunked, but also an effective trap to lure the self-righteous into agreeing  that ends justify unethical means as long as the victims of those ends are sufficiently despicable.   This group includes one of the most quoted commentators on the story, who approved of the fictional response by the town and wrote,

“This is a template for how to handle the Westboro people. If lawsuits don’t work, other means will. Whatever it takes to keep them from harassing bereaved military families on the day their fallen loved ones are laid to rest.”

He was wrong then, and he’s wrong now.

Don’t Cheer Mississippi’s Westboro Baptist Tactics Too Loudly: You Never Know Who Might Hear You

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

"Demonstrators? Just leave them to us."

Sgt. Jason Rogers, who was killed in action in Afghanistan, was buried two weeks ago in Brandon, Mississippi. As is its custom, the Westboro Baptist Church, fresh from U.S. Supreme Court-confirmed constitutional protection, was prepared to sully Sgt. Rogers’ funeral with its usual hateful chants about how God kills our soldiers to punish our sinful, homosexual-loving ways. Its plans were foiled, however, by a little bit of traditional Mississippi social control ingenuity.

A couple of days before the funeral, one of Fred Phelps’ vile cultists boasted about the upcoming protest while visiting a Brandon gas station, and the good citizenry on the scene gave him the sound beating they felt his sentiments warranted. Continue reading →

Dr. Tiller’s Executioner: Martyr, Monster or Ethical Murderer?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Scott Roeder was guilty of first degree murder by any legal definition. He decided that Dr. George R. Tiller had to die. He bought a gun and practiced shooting it. He studied his target, learned his habits, knew where he lived and where he went to church. It was inside that church where he finally killed Dr. Tiller after a full year of planning, shooting him in the forehead last May 31. He admitted all of this to the jury, and said he was not sorry. Short of jury nullification, a “not guilty” verdict was impossible, and there was no nullification. Roeder broke the law and was found guilty. He will probably be sentenced to life imprisonment.

I have no objections to this result. Society cannot have citizens performing executions or carrying out their own brand of vigilante justice. Scott Roeder, however, while not denying that he performed an illegal act, maintains that his act was an ethical one.

He has a point. Continue reading →

When the Police Lie to Convict the Guilty

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his recent experience as a juror. It was a trial of a man accused of selling $10 of heroin to an undercover officer. Weingarten professed to be annoyed that such a small amount would justify an arrest and trial; he’s just wrong about that. Dealing a dangerous prohibited drug is still dealing, no matter what the amount. I know this is the kind of case that gets the legalize-drugs-so-we don’t-put-so-many-people-in-jail crowd all self-righteous, but “a smidgen of heroin dealing” still supports a destructive social problem, and law abiding citizens don’t deal even a little smack.

That’s not really the issue here, however.

Weingarten was convinced that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was also convinced that the police were lying. Continue reading →

Lobbyist Ventriloquism and the Abysmal State of Congressional Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When Washington, D.C. attorney Robert Trout delivered his closing argument in the trial of former Rep. William Jefferson (now known as “Inmate CB476881”) for, among other things, accepting a large cash bribe that was later found in his office freezer, he told the jury that the prosecution was hypocritical and unfair. After all, he said, “If seeking political help was a crime, you could lock up half of metropolitan Washington, D.C.” Jefferson’s actions may have been unethical, and they were certainly a mistake, but really now: isn’t this just what all Congressmen do? Jefferson, Trout argued, just got a little bit carried away.

Jefferson was convicted, so there is some distance left for our faith in our elected representatives to fall before it hits rock bottom. The argument was still ethically disturbing in two respects. First of all, Trout’s pitch amounted to a jury nullification plea, a defense in which a jury is encouraged to ignore the law, and that is unethical lawyering.

Second, Trout may well have been right. Continue reading →