“I believe this attitude of personal power to decide the correctness of the law is an out growth of the moral relevancy being taught in our schools and demanded by the Left.”
I beg to differ. Jury nullification is hardly a modern event. One of the earliest cases where a jury decided a case disregarding settled law and the judges’s instructions was in 1670. In this trial, William Penn was charged with violation of the “Conventicle Act,” which made the Church of England the only legal Church. The jurors who voted ‘not guilty’ not only set Penn free to emmigrate to America (subsequently founding a place called “Pennsylvania) but they caused the very Act he was supposed to have violated to be struck down. They spent nine weeks in prison for their audacity.
Since then several U.S. courts have decreed the jury has the right and the power to judge both the facts in the case and the law in question. In the late 1930’s judges stopped telling juries of that right but it’s still there.
I suggest you check out the FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association) site at FIJA.org. Afterward, even if you still disagree with the principle you will at least understand why others feel differently.
Thank you for that very informative reply. However, in my experience, and I agree with this, the juries that I was involved with were instructed to judge the case according to present law. I agree with that. As another Freeper said, each juror should not act as an independent member of SCOUS.
Thanks for the info. You sound knowledgeable enough that I won’t have to check it out. It still sounds sort of like vigilante justice to me.
Also, I always considered jury nullification to be pre-trial publicity which prejudiced the jury pool.