“How is that (and what the black jurors in the immediate case attempted to do) not the same thing as jury nullification?”
Jury nullification was designed so jurors could judge the law as well as the facts. Is the law against murder just? Clearly it is. Back in the days of slavery many Northern juries refused to convict defendants charged with violating the Fugitive Slave Act as it was clearly an unjust law.
This isn’t jury nullification. It’s racial vengeance. Big difference.
L
OK, yes, however the result is the same. (Blacks see the law as unjust because they view it through the prism of coming about as a result of white suppression/supremacy.)
In the end this is jury nullification by another name if you want to term it as racial vengeance (I’d tend to agree that’s where the thought process comes from).
I see this statement often, and it makes me wonder. Do people not realize the US Constitution requires fugitive slaves to be returned?
Article IV, Section 2, clause 3
"No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
Article IV, Section 2 makes it very clear that Constitutional law requires the return of escaped slaves to their owners, and yet people still think that defying constitutional law is no big deal.
So was it okay for juries to nullify Constitutional law? Were they their very own little secession party for the entire state?