Make Sure All Your Friends Know, And Know Not To Say Anything

Relevant for the current times, but in general I think jury nullification is the right response to any bullshit you see if you are on a jury.

Jury nullification is an old weapon against tyranny. America’s founding generation saw juries as charged with determining not just fact but also law—that is, jurors could decide to acquit the accused, even those who seemed guilty of what they were charged with, if jurors believed that the law itself was unjust. An 1895 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Sparf, involving a murder at sea, officially stripped juries of the right to decide the law, ruling that they could consider only the facts of the case and how those facts relate to the law. Juries can still nullify, however, because judges have no authority to review a verdict of “not guilty.”

Jury nullification has long had a bad reputation because of the crime it was frequently used to cover up: lynching. For generations in the South, all-white juries nullified accusations of murder involving lynchings, many of which were carried out with the participation of a town’s politicians, law enforcement, and leading businessmen. Unable or unwilling to point to the culprits, coroners would describe the murders with the haunting phrase “death at the hands of persons unknown.” Whether out of fear for their own safety or in solidarity with the murderers, jurors who refused to indict ensured that extrajudicial killings in the South were rarely punished. A tool meant to prevent tyranny was instead used to enforce it.

Yet as the Morris case shows, the tool itself is not inherently evil. Jury nullification is neutral, its morality defined by the cause for which it is employed. Now that President Donald Trump is perverting the Justice Department into an instrument of political persecution, jury nullification may be one of the only mechanisms that everyday Americans have to protect the rule of law.