Jury nullification protects people from the State
August 16, 2008 – 3:08 pm by JohnProsecutors and judges have an alarming tendency to empower the State over individuals. Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute reports on a juror who was removed from a jury by the judge, against the protests of the defense, for attempting to protest the very law the defendant was accused of breaking.
It was supposed to be just another federal drug prosecution. The federal prosecutors introduced evidence that the man on trial was involved in the black market drug trade. The defense attorney said the government agents entrapped his client. And then the twelve citizen-jurors retired to deliberate the outcome of the case.
But then something unusual happened. The jury sent a note to the trial judge with the following query: Since the Constitution needed to be amended in 1919 to authorize federal criminal prosecutions for manufacturing and smuggling alcohol, a juror wanted to know from the judge where “is the constitutional grant of authority to ban mere possession of cocaine today?”
That’s a fair question. It is a point that has been made in Cato’s publications…and a point that has been made by Justice Clarence Thomas, among many others. Federal District Court Judge William Young was startled. He says he has been on the bench for 30 years and has never faced a situation where a juror was challenging the legitimacy of a criminal law. Young tried to assure the jury that the federal drug laws are constitutional because the Supreme Court has interpreted the commerce clause quite expansively. When the jury sent out more notes about a juror that wasn’t going to sign off on an unconstitutional prosecution, Young halted the proceedings to identify the ”problem juror.” Once discovered, that juror was replaced with an alternate—over the objections of defense counsel. Shortly thereafter, the new jury returned with guilty verdicts on several cocaine-related charges.
I know several lawyers now. They are my friends from high school and college. I think and hope they wouldn’t become so dismissive of the right of jury nullification in the interest of promoting convictions and upholding State fiat regardless of the justice of the laws and the judgments of the jury.
2 Responses to “Jury nullification protects people from the State”
Not too long ago, I was talking to Adam and I mentioned how since I had voted for the first time this year to participate in the primary, that I had put myself at risk for jury selection. I then grinned and said, “Oh well, let them select me for jury duty. I’ll just make sure my fellow jurors know about Jury nullification.”
Adam didn’t seem to like that thought. Of course, he is an Assistant District Attorney, and I imagine losing an entire case – no matter how well presented – simply because the jurors didn’t feel the law that was broken shouldn’t have been a law in the first place would sort of suck. But I imagine if I were to be selected, I would suffer a similar fate as the juror in this story.
By Kel on Aug 18, 2008