← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · John Graziano
Thread ID: 17516 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-03-25
2005-03-25 17:22 | User Profile
I was in Bronx County court last week doing my biennial tour of duty. Initially, we hapless inmates were congregated in a large communal waiting room and forced to watch some instructional video on the glorious history of the American jury system narrated by Diane Sawyer and that octogenarian, bearded, earing bedecked Nigra from '60 Minutes'.
The salient points made by the video revolved around two seminal trials in the evolution of the AngloAmerican jury system, William Penn's 1670 trial in England for preaching Quakerism, and newspaper publisher Peter Zenger's 1735 trail in colonial New York for seditious libel. The first trial established the right of juries to deliberate unfettered by judicial tampering, i.e., without being told by some black robed shyster which verdict to arrive at and how to arrive at it under pain of incarceration - or worse. The second trial ultimately established the much vaunted first amendment right to freedom of the press. What the two trials had in common, and what was never mentioned in the video, was they were both resolved by blatant exercises of the hoary principle of jury nullification. This principle holds that a jury is conscience bound to come to a verdict of 'Not Guilty' even if they believe that the defendant is guilty as sin, so long as they deem either the law or the punishment it provides for to be unjust.
The next day, during voir dire (jury stacking), the black robed huckster admonished us to strictly adhere to judging of the facts of the case and to disregard considerations of the severity of the punishment or the fairness of the statute, for these were the exclusive province of the court. Those who could not attest their concordance would be dismissed, a relief to those of us gainfully employed or otherwise eager to get back to our pimpin', hoein', or crack dealing. When I raised the specter of jury nullification, the judge, upon the rest of the prospective jurors giving unmistakable signs of impenetrable incomprehension, explicated most magisterially: "That's when the jury takes the law into their own hands. We don't do that here!".
Naturally, I was told that my further services would not be required.
Today the legal profession accords jury nullification the same regard that it does the right of secession. I would appreciate the thoughts of decent, honorable men on the subject of jury nullification, and its de facto juridical nullification. Lawyers and other men of sharp practice need not molest us with their impertinent sophistries.