Don't know if this is your cup of tea; but if it is, I'd be delighted to hear from you!
The "above link" referred to above is:
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/history-jury-null.html
The other is:
http://www.fija.org
My sister, an Assistant County Attorney told me that a good way to not get on a jury is to ask the judge if you can do the nullification right away, or if you have to sit through the whole trial... :)
The history of Britain and America is full of references about this, from the trials of Penn to the trials under the fugitive slave acts.
Nullification served a dual purpose: First, as a remedy for unjust laws and overzealous prosecutors.
Secondly, the early legal minds of this country were disinclined to demand a juror return any verdict that the juror could not in good conscience support. The "Right of Conscience" is one of our forgotten rights. A definition would go something lik this:
"We would rather a man do wrong, believing what he had done was right, than do right, but feeling in his heart he had done wrong"
I am deeply concerned that there have been a number of jury verdicts overthrown lately.
"I strongly believe in the doctrine of jury nullification, and look forward to educating my fellow jusrors about their duty to judge the law as well as the facts."
Amazing, but somehow, I never get selected to actually sit on the jury.
Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic
governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS Book VI By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
"Members of the jury, I asked you to look beyond your prejudices and consider what this evil man did. Yes, we were all stunned that day when millions died due to the tragedy of nuclear weapons exploding in our cities. And while it was true that Muslims committed those acts, the mosque he burned down had no connection whatsoever other than providing a space to work out the details of the attack. This evil man deserves to go to prison for life to show that we Americans are above such vigilante acts of revenge!"
So if you're on that jury, what do you do?
However at this time we see judges and prosecutors more often colluding together to "get a conviction" and usurping the rights of the accused. This is exactly what jury nullification was designed to temper. Check this out.
http://www.post-gazette.com/win/bios.asp
Also let me know if you would like free brochures regarding Jury Nullification.
Bumped and bookmarked.
Good post.
Jury nullification is indeed a two-edged sword. The OJ trial is a case, really, of jury nullification. They simply refused to convict based on a general mistrust of the police that his attorneys played on.
The second, civil, trial bothered me in much the way that the re-trial of the Rodney King cops bothered me; it smacks of double-jepardy. Someone didn't like the first verdict, so they re-try the case until they get the answer they want. Actually, I wasn't that happy with the verdicts, but under our system, once the jury has spoken, that it supposed to be the end of it. Re-visiting the crime with federal civil rights prosecution, or a civil suit after aquittal "nullifies" the first jury.
So if juries have almost forgotten that they can nullify laws, lawyers and judges have discovered ways to nullify juries.
Whatever its imperfections, jury nullification stands as the penultimate popular veto (the ultimate being the second ammendment). Both of these are blunt weapons. If things have deteriorated to the point that they are needed, things are in bad shape indeed. But knowing that they exist provides a corrective that more often than not prevents the need to invoke them. And if things really go sour, thats what they are there for. In a democratic republic, laws have to have popular support or they are not law.
That gets spooky in cases where the majority are oppressing a minority, which happens from time to time, where the victim is not very likeable and the perp is a sympathetic figure. In such a case jury nullification could leave the victim without any redress. But this is intended as a corrective against state misconduct, it can't do much in the case where the good neighbors have gone off the track. But that is the weakness of democracy in general, not merely of the jury system.
So if you are a victim and the jury has refused to convict your victimizer, you have the option of leaving it to God, or taking justice in your own hand, either of which stands in its own way as another kind of jury nullification. Judges and police, in the final analysis are our agents, not our rulers.
Or you endure and work to change the hearts of your neighbors. Its slow, but its how people finally change. Thats where preachers and pundits come in to play their role.
You can never achieve perfection, you can only set up enough checks and balances and back doors and parallel routes so that you can't game the system indefinitely, and no one has the absolute advantage.