Well said.
And, Jean, I also applaud your, Of course, WRT jury nullification, it doesn't nullify the egregious law, only its application to the specific defendant. But I imagine if nullification happened often enough respecting an egregious law, it would effectively be rendered null and void.
It was for that very reason that jury nullification is a right that was defined and strongly defended by our Founders. They insisted that juries should serve an integral role in determining the 'rightness' of law, and that the enforcement of law should depend, in part, on the positive scrutiny it received in subsequent jury trials.
Another 'grey area' in our history in which juries have employed nullification in order to strike back at what they considered to be morally repugnant laws (in addition to the denial of justice for blacks in the south, as YHAOS has cited) occurred in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century with many attempted enforcements of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The acts were viewed by many to be blatantly tyrannical and unconstitutional, and ruling 'not guilty' in cases brought to court under those particularly unpopular acts was often considered courageous and honorable.
More recently, jury nullification has been put into practice in cases involving mercy killings, in which jurors sincerely believed that the killer was acting only out of concern for the victim, and believed the law to be too intractible in a specific case.
As Betty has observed, each example of jury nullification is unique to a specific case, and does not affect the law itself, other than to ignore it, to one degree or another, by refusing to enforce punishment in a specific instance.
Personally, I believe the concept is a good one -- especially in this increasingly secular and hedonistic era in which a growing number of laws seem to defy logic, common sense, and the moral/religious consciences of 'good' people ... and in which an increasing number of laws are passed with their explicit purpose being to (generally covertly) expand the power of government and proportionately decrease the freedom of the individual.
At the same time, jurors (the majority, I suspect) who are not aware that they can choose to invoke nullification of a law that they view as unjust or immoral, are not always advised of that prerogative. Indeed, they are often instructed otherwise.
So, as is the case in much of legal/judicial procedure these days, consistency is an apparition, and the futures of many of our fellow countrymen, and our businesses and institutions, depend largely on the 'luck of the draw' -- as regards the informed, or uninformed, nature of the jury, the willingness of the judge and/or attorneys to advise the jurors of their options, and the courage and confidence of each member of the jury in his/her ability to put nullification into practice.
Unfortunately, the acceptance of the practice of jury nullification has waned as the number, and illogic/tyrannical/special interest nature, of laws has increased over the past two centuries. Early in our history, judges made it a practice of informing juries of their nullification rights (and if the judge neglected to do so, the defense attorney would often correct his oversight). Today, most judges not only neglect to do so, but many go so far as to falsely instruct the jury that their only authority is to decide whether a law has been broken, whether or not they believe the law to be moral or just.
In several recent cases, a judge has even seen fit to remove a juror, upon receiving information that that juror intends to deliver a verdict that will nullify the law upon which the case rests.
If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then that juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty (1788) ... Bancroft, History of the Constitution.
Perhaps more than any other time in our history, we would be wise to reflect on John Adams' two-plus-centuries-old wise and insightful advice:
It is not only his [a juror's] right but his duty ... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
The increasing suppression of the juror's right of nullification represents yet another item in a long, and growing, list that reflects the deadly transformation of this republic's government from one of, by and for the people to something much more toxic and tyrannical.
~ joanie ... 