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Strengths and weaknesses of jury nullification
Strengths and weaknesses of jury nullification
Critique the effectiveness of jury nullification in trial
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In 1895, in the United States v Sparf, the U.S. Supreme
Court voted 7 to 2 to uphold the conviction case in which the
trial judge refused the defense attorney's request to let the
jury know of their nullification power. (Linder, 2001). Jury
nullification occurs when a jury returns a verdict of "Not
Guilty" despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the
violation charged. The jury in effect mollifies a law that it
believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant
whose fates that are charged with deciding. (Linder2001). In the
United States, a trial involves an essential division of labor
between a judge and jury. The judge is the determiner of the law
and the jurors are the sole judge of the facts presented in
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the case. Under jury nullification, jurors are free to acquit if they find the evidence presented by the prosecution to be weak or unbelievable. The jurors however are not allowed to vote not guilty because they do not like the law in question (Neubauer2001).
The big question is does the jury have the
right to nullification even if they know the defendant is
guilty? This research paper will discuss the issues surrounding
jury nullification.
There are some who still advocate jury nullification. They
feel that the juror has the right to not convict if they feel
that the law is unjust or at least unfair. They maintain that
it is an important safeguard of last resort against wrongful
imprisonment and government tyranny. Clearly there is a place
for jury nullification in the US. There has been a long history
of unfair laws and practices in the country and allowing the
jury the power to overturn or nullify them is a good way to keep
the government in check (Jones, 2004).
Many people believe that jury nullifications are illegal
and overly political. As court cases are become more highly
politicized, having individuals who disagree with a law takes
away the sense of justice, and can give one person the ability
to influence the entire jury to acquit someone they know is
guilty which undermines the law. They also view it as a risk to
higher public officials, an acquittal for criminal case
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means that there are no consequences. One example of jury nullification was in the case of Rodney King beating back in April 29, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. Four white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of the charges in brutally beating Rodney King.
Even this year there have been
many acquittals in cases involving officers using deadly force,
most notably against the black community. Almost in every case
the officer was acquitted by nullification, and it starting to
have a undesired effect on society as a whole.
Some black lawmakers have said that since a jury is
representative of a community then jurors should have the right
to decide which people, they will allow to live among them
(Butler, 1995). This implies that jurors exercise their power
based on conscience and not based on the facts of the case. The
belief here is that the laws are inherently unfair because they
were created by and for white people (Butler, 1995). There have
been cases where black jurors have used these same laws to free
black people as a balance against the white community. One case
showed how an African American drug dealer from Washington D.C.
had tortured an eighteen year old to death in front of
witnesses. With all the evidence pointing into the direction of
a guilty decision, an all African American jury found the drug
dealer not guilty of the crime. One of the jurors, Valerie
Blackmon was reported saying, "She didn't want to send any
more young black men to jail." During the deliberation, Blackmon argued to the other members of the jury, "criminal justice system is stacked against blacks" and this was the reason why the jury acquitted the drug dealer (Weiss,1996).
In a Georgia Court, Timothy Foster was convicted of capital murder and penalized to death. During his trial, the State Court use peremptory challenges to strike all four black prospective jurors qualified to serve on the Jury. However, Foster argued that the use of these strikes was racially motivated, in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S.79. That led his claim to be rejected by the trial court, and the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. The state courts rejected relief, and the Foster’s Batson claim had been adjudicated on direct appeal. Finally, his Batson claim had been failed by the court because it failed to show “any change in the facts sufficient to overcome”.
Paul Butler says in his article, “Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No”, “If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote ‘not guilty’…As a juror you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you will become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.” This is in reference to jury nullification. It is an actual constitutional doctrine that is premised upon the idea that the jury (ordinary citizens), not government officials, should possess the final word on whether an individual should be punished. As Butler explains, jury nullification is for the most part a good thing. It was necessary to end prohibition, it has caused prosecutors over the years to change tactics when
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
Now that we have discussed the pretrial occurrences, we get into the trial portion of the court process. This is the portion of the process in which both the defense and the prosecution present their cases to the jury, the judge, and the rest of the courtroom. To select a jury, the bring in potential jurors and ask them questions,
I believe that the jury system is an unfair system due to the limitations which are included during jury selection. Many professionals and groups of people are exempt from jury service: police or anyone dealing with the law (law student, lawyer, judges, assessors), anyone dealing in medicine (doctors, nurses), small or large business owners Pregnant women or women in general can claim special considerations, along with; teachers, accountants, ministers of religion, or generally anyone with a professional/education. So due to this, people who serve on a jury can be unemployed or part of a less educated and informed strata of society.
Despite the efforts of lawyers and judges to eliminate racial discrimination in the courts, does racial bias play a part in today’s jury selection? Positive steps have been taken in past court cases to ensure fair and unbiased juries. Unfortunately, a popular strategy among lawyers is to incorporate racial bias without directing attention to their actions. They are taught to look for the unseen and to notice the unnoticed. The Supreme Court in its precedent setting decision on the case of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), is the first step to limiting racial discrimination in the court room. The process of selecting jurors begins with prospective jurors being brought into the courtroom, then separating them into smaller groups to be seated in the jury box. The judge and or attorneys ask questions with intent to determine if any juror is biased or cannot deal with the issues fairly. The question process is referred to as voir dire, a French word meaning, “to see to speak”. During voir dire, attorneys have the right to excuse a juror in peremptory challenges. Peremptory challenges are based on the potential juror admitting bias, acquaintanceship with one of the parties, personal knowledge of the facts, or the attorney believing he/she might not be impartial. In the case of Batson v. Kentucky, James Batson, a black man, was indicted for second-degree burglary and receipt of stolen goods. During the selection of the jury the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike out all of the four black potential jurors, leaving an all white jury. Batson’s attorney moved to discharge the venire, the list from which jurors may be selected, on the grounds that the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges violated his client’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to have a jury derived from a “cross-section of the community”(People v. Wheeler, 583 P.3d 748 [Calif. 1978]). The circuit court ruled in favor of the prosecutor and convicted Batson on both counts. This case went through the courts and finalized in the U.S. Supreme Court.
From the Ferguson, Missouri case of an officer “wrongfully” protecting himself to the Texas DWI case involving the father murdering the murderer of his sons, the media helps play a larger role on the scale to emphasize more attraction to the topic of the moment. With the increasing complexity and reach of the law, to nullify is to be a useful tool in a democratic society. However, a verdict should be based on the law as decided by the whole people, not the few who make up the jury of a particular case. Although judges and legal scholars take a variety of positions of the subject of jury nullification, the validity of the practice is said to follow logically from several aspects of our judicial system. In the general, judges are unwilling in most states to even inform juries the option of
In the United States, jury trials are an important part of our court system. We rely heavily on the jury to decide the fate of the accused. We don’t give a second thought to having a jury trial now, but they were not always the ‘norm’.
A study of race and jury trials in Florida published last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that “conviction rates for black and white defendants are similar when there is at least some representation of blacks in the jury pool.” But all-white juries are a very different story—they convict blacks 16% more often than they convict whites (2).
A jury is a panel of citizens, selected randomly from the electoral role, whose job it is to determine guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented. The Jury Act 1977 (NSW) stipulates the purpose of juries and some of the legal aspects, such as verdicts and the right of the defence and prosecution to challenge jurors. The jury system is able to reflect the moral and ethical standards of society as members of the community ultimately decide whether the person is guilty or innocent. The creation of the Jury Amendment Act 2006 (NSW) enabled the criminal trial process to better represent the standards of society as it allowed majority verdicts of 11-1 or 10-2, which also allowed the courts to be more resource efficient. Majority verdicts still ensure that a just outcome is reached as they are only used if there is a hung jury and there has been considerable deliberation. However, the role of the media is often criticized in relation to ensuring that the jurors remain unbiased as highlighted in the media article “Independent Juries” (SMH, 2001), and the wide reporting of R v Gittany 2013 supports the arguments raised in the media article. Hence, the jury system is moderately effective in reflecting the moral and ethical standards of society, as it resource efficient and achieves just outcomes, but the influence of the media reduces the effectiveness.
In several cases and studies, there is a substantial amount of racial bias in the criminal justice system. In fact, the 1978 McClesky conviction has proven to support Baldus’s study in 1998. Warren McClesky, an African American male, was found guilty of killing a Georgia police officer. The legal team who represented McClesky exposed a study that showed how biased racial inequality is in the death penalty, but the court contended the argument because “disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system” (Touré). Furthermore, race has always been a serious matter in the Supreme Court and other government administrations, but they fail to recognize the
Bornstein, B. H., and E. Greene. "Jury Decision Making: Implications For and From Psychology." Current Directions in Psychological Science 20.1 (2011): 63-67. Print.
The jury plays a crucial role in the courts of trial. They are an integral part in the Australian justice system. The jury system brings ordinary people into the courts everyday to judge whether a case is guilty or innocent. The role of the jury varies, depending on the different cases. In Australia, the court is ran by an adversary system. In this system “..individual litigants play a central part, initiating court action and largely determining the issues in dispute” (Ellis 2013, p. 133). In this essay I will be discussing the role of the jury system and how some believe the jury is one of the most important institutions in ensuring that Australia has an effective legal system, while others disagree. I will evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of a jury system.
It is important that each case is treated equally when carrying out justice to keep the United States a safe place, to form a nation with good education, and to teach people to judge right from wrong. However, sometimes rights are taken from the wrong people. Our legal system is creating a dangerous path for African Americans in our country because of its’ highest per capita incarceration rate, its’ favoritism towards those in power, and its failure to carry out justice to protect people from the dangerous acts of those who are defined as criminals. Was justice really served in the “State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman” case? Is our justice system fair to all races?
There is no greater example of government “of the people, by the people, for the people” than the right of trial by jury. The jury is a slice of The People—not mere representatives of The People, but literally The People—whose vital role was to be the ultimate finder of fact and of law. We agree that the right to