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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.
Laura Jean Kriho (July 23, 1964 – January 30, 2017) [1] was an American cannabis legalization advocate and was also known for her part in a jury nullification trial in the mid-1990s. Kriho was also involved in the Cannabis Therapy Institute and in the push for the adoption of Amendment 20 in the Colorado Constitution.
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]
Some prosecutors and law enforcement professionals are strongly opposed to the notion that juries can nullify undesirable laws. [17] In 2008, Clay Conrad, author of Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, quit the organization, stating that it was "so centered on jury nullification that it was ignoring the numerous threats that exist to the jury as an institution," [18] as evidenced ...
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 June 2000, Bruce was called to appear as a potential juror for a sexual assault trial in Colorado Springs. During the jury selection process, Bruce distributed leaflets written by the Fully Informed Jury Association in support of jury nullification. After defense attorneys objected to Bruce's actions, the presiding judge dismissed Bruce and ...
A change of venue is the legal term for moving a trial to a new location. In high-profile matters, a change of venue may occur to move a jury trial away from a location where a fair and impartial jury may not be possible due to widespread publicity about a crime and its defendants to another community in order to obtain jurors who can be more objective in their duties.
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 ...