Oh yes it is, dear marron. The OJ case you cite is most instructive. Many Americans took great umbrage at the result of the first, criminal trial, feeling that justice had not been served. American popular opinion had been turned against the very idea of jury independence by the mass press at the time: "Popular justice" called for the return of a guilty verdict.
But the jury evidently had problems with police procedure and so forth. If the DA's case is sloppy or otherwise questionable, any sane jury might refuse to convict -- under the judge's very instructions that guilt must be ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt. The performance of the DA and the police gave the jury capacious scope for entertaining notions of reasonable doubt.... At best, the performance of the prosecutorial authorities was confusing.
Whatever we think of the trial outcome, that should have been the end of it. But it was not: The criminal jury was overridden -- as it were nullified -- by the civil jury. Such a development does not seem to be authorized under constitutional rules.
So the public needs to ask itself whether such an "evolution" of legal rule is justified or authorized by the Constitution under which it has long lived. That is, the public must ask this question, and answer it, if it expects to maintain the rules of existence as it knows them from its own direct experience over time. Either that, or it must be prepared to quickly adapt to whatever pipe dream legal theory has been conjured up and articulated by the newest "bright boy" that the New York Times might want to feature on its front page....
As for me, I would rather set a guilty man free than ever to see the Constitution undermined.
Think of our sovereign, unalienable rights this way: (1) Never have any of them ever been grants of the state -- They have a divine source, and thus the state may not touch them in any way. (2) The state will try, not only to touch them, but to make them go away. (3) Natural rights -- that is, God-given rights -- are like muscles: You use them, or you lose them.
Thank you, dear friend, for your beautiful reply, and for letting me rant here....
p.s.: As I mentioned a while back, the Fully Informed Jury Association (www.fija.com) is an excellent source of materials that educate people in their sovereign rights as jurors. I also mentioned this was a Libertarian organization -- which is not to impugn the outfit in any way. Just noting the vintage here.
In any case, FIJA justly sees the sovereign rights of jurors as a potential check on the excesses of government authority. I get the impression they think the next "test cases" will come in the area of marijuana decriminalization/legalization. The point is, whether they're right or wrong about this, if there is any real, solid public enthusiasm for anything that statutory law cuts against, if the people insist on their own preferences rather than those their elected officials give them, as enforced by the courts -- under the theory of the Constitution, the people ought to prevail. It seems FIJA believes it has methods and tools that can help in the prosecution of public goals whose proponents achieve a certain critical mass....