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Jury nullification sometimes takes the form of a jury convicting the defendant of lesser charges than the prosecutor sought. [13] In the 21st century, many discussions of jury nullification center around drug laws that many consider unjust either in principle or because they disproportionately affect members of certain groups.
Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws that they deem unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution (as opposed to the state's own constitution).
Childers, Christopher. "Interpreting Popular Sovereignty: A Historiographical Essay," Civil War History 57#1 (2011) pp. 48–70 online; Etcheson, Nicole. "The Great Principle of Self-Government: Popular Sovereignty and Bleeding Kansas," Kansas History 27 (Spring-Summer 2004):14-29, links it to Jacksonian Democracy
Jury nullification may also occur in civil suits, in which the verdict is generally a finding of liability or lack of liability (rather than a finding of guilty or not guilty). [22] The main ethical issue involved in jury nullification is the tension between democratic self-government and integrity. [23]
Make no mistake, jury nullification, like it or not, is as American as apple pie: Courts recognize that jurors surely have the power to nullify, even if not the right.
United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606 (2nd Cir. 1997), [1] was a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that a juror could not be removed from a jury on the ground that the juror was acting in purposeful disregard of the court's instructions on the law, when the record evidence raises a possibility that the juror was simply unpersuaded by the Government's case ...
In a commentary on Leonard Levy's book Origins of the Bill of Rights (1999), Professor Brian C. Kalt of the Michigan State University College of Law argues that the saying simply expresses the intent of the United States Bill of Rights to enshrine and protect the popular sovereignty. It succinctly defines the four methods by which the people ...
Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a not guilty verdict even though jurors believe beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant has broken the law. This may happen when jurors disagree ...