Who the hell do you have running your courts up there??? How can a jury deliberate without knowing the standard of proof, which is different in a civil vs. a criminal case? How about the amount of the damages? If you all had voted against the guy, would the amount requested automatically be assumed to be the right amount? Normally in a lawsuit, the plaintiff asks for a certain amount, but the jury actually awards a specific figure, which can be different from the suit amount.
Are you sure this was an official trial and not just the bailiff wanting to play judge so he buys a robe and lets himself into the courtroom? If I were in a situation like that, I’d nullify EVEN IF I THOUGHT THE GUY WAS GUILTY because that kind of abuse of the process is a worse hazard than any individual criminal. So my natural inclination would be to give them the opposite of whatever they’re trying to achieve till they run the case in a proper and Constitutional manner.
Oh they knew the standard of proof, the judge did his job there (except the part that the case never should have gone to trial).
It was very specific in the instructions to the jury. The act have to have been committed and the defendant had to have knowingly committed the act. It was very specific that the answer to both had to be YES in order to render guilt. The answer to the second was an agreed upon NO but 4 of the 6 member jury still wanted to come justify coming back with guilty. The fifth flipped because they wanted to get out and not carry over till Tuesday.
Normally in a lawsuit, the plaintiff asks for a certain amount, but the jury actually awards a specific figure, which can be different from the suit amount.
That may have been the case. I knew (my wife didn't) that Boise was seeking $7,500. It may have been that with a guilty the jury was to set the actual amount based on some guidelines, but since it ended up with a hung jury never got that far to find out how that would have been handled.
One of the reasons that criminal cases require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" is that the government has many other advantages when it brings a case to court, and raising the standard of proof serves to offset some of those advantages, thus promoting balance. Further, since citizens are supposed to be the masters and government the servant, any imbalance should favor the citizen.
In a civil case between non-government parties, it's generally fair to reduce the standard of proof to "preponderance of the evidence" because--at least in most cases--the government's "advantages" don't translate into advantage for either party; to require a higher standard of proof would be to put the citizen who happens to be the plaintiff in a particular case at a decided disadvantage compared to the one who happens to be the defendant.
I see no reason, however, why the lower standard of proof should apply in cases where the plaintiff is, in fact, the government. While it may seem in some measure reasonable to have a lower standard of proof in cases where money is owed for reasons not involving wrong-doing, a serious difficulty would arise in cases where a person refused to pay and was ultimately charged criminally for such refusal. If the person never legitimately owed a certain sum of money to the government, the person cannot justly be prosecuted for refusing to pay that which was not owed. Thus, prosecution for non-payment should require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the money was, in fact, owed. To allow a lower standard of proof in non-criminal hearings would create some awkward situations where the government would be found to have the authority to demand payment but lack the authority to punish non-payment.