Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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).
Rebuffed repeatedly by chief justice James DeLancey during the trial, Hamilton decided to plead his client's case directly to the jury. After the lawyers for both sides finished their arguments on August 5, 1735, the jury retired only to return in ten minutes with a verdict of not guilty, [15] [16] [17] a famous example of jury nullification.
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.
The reversal of a jury's verdict by a judge occurs when the judge believes that there were insufficient facts on which to base the jury's verdict or that the verdict did not correctly apply the law. That procedure is similar to a situation in which a judge orders a jury to arrive at a particular verdict, called a directed verdict. A judgment ...
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). [20] The main ethical issue involved in jury nullification is the tension between democratic self-government and integrity. [21]
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 ...
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that a prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so—may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race.