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I recently got a notice from the county where I live that I may soon be chosen for jury duty. So I started looking up information about serving jury duty and I came upon something interesting. The article seems to think that the point of a trail by jury is so that a small percentage of people can stop the government from creating unjust laws. A member of a jury is apparently completely within his or her right to call for a person to be not guilty if they feel the law is unjust. So because of this fact that it only takes a small percentage of the population to be a 1 in 12 jurors so that no person is convicted on an unjust law. Apparently judges once had to remind jurors of the fact that they have this right but the government passed a law that it is no longer required.
Tomder55, a law will stay on the books no matter what any number of juries decide. However, if such a thing as you describe is going on, legislators and policy-makers better wake up and take notice. Such a thing would be all over the media.
excon, isn't jury nullification is when the judge throws out the jury's decision?
Hello WV:
Lets say that a guy gets caught with pot. He wants a jury trial. He admits he had the pot, but the jury doesn't like the charge, so they find him not guilty anyway.
Therefore, the jury nullified the law (at least in this instance).
The case from TX yesterday where the man who shot two burglars coming out of his neighbor's house is a case in point. Texas law says that you have a right to use deadly force to protect your own property, and certainly in self-defense, but this case involved two burglars who were robbing the man's neighbor. He shot them both as they were running away (in the back). There was some disagreement as to whether they had crossed a corner of the man's property, but in no way was this a case of self-defense or or protecting his own property. Nevertheless, the grand jury refused to indite. Seems like a case where the jury decided that the man was justified, even though the law was not on his side. See: Joe Horn cleared by grand jury in Pasadena shootings | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
As I mentioned previously, there is a whopping difference between a grand jury, whose purpose it is determine if there is probable cause to charge a person with a crime, and a trial jury, which decides whether a person is guilty or not guilty.
Without knowing all the facts and the wording of the statute, and particularly the measure to which the shooter felt he was placed in fear at the time, I think it would be impossible to make a judgement as to whether the decision was rendered because of jury nullificatrion or lack of probable cause.
In my state, under the circrumstances described, I can guarantee you that this person would be charged and it is standard procedure here not to submit a case for grand jury consideration unless the prosecutor is sure that an indictment (sometime known as a true bill) will result.
The comment at the bottom of my last post is an important one. Race is also a factor in jury nullification, not just the dislike of a certain law. I have read about some cases in New York where the jury was the same race as the defendant and they acquitted even though the evidence was said to be clearly present for a conviction.
Lemme tell you a little bit about a grand jury... It's the PROSECUTORS domain... HE runs it. HE present the witnesses HE likes. There are NO defense attorney's present. There are NO defense witnesses. Witnesses can be asked questions by the jurors, and they are.
It's been said, without too much tongue in cheek, that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if he wanted to.
Therefore, I maintain that the grand jury was called for the purpose of NOT indicting him. It was called for the purpose of letting the white men of Texas know that they can kill Mexicans if the mood strikes them.
In addition to that, prosecutor's normally don't present cases to the grand jury unless they are pretty much certin they will get an indictment, or to put it another way, a finding by the grand jury that probable cause existed. And probable cause is a low burden to meet when compared to "beyond a reasonable doubt."
I can imagine a case in which a prosecutor who doesn't want to charge a person with a crime, but also doesn't want the burden for the decision to fall on him, would turn it over to a grand jury to make the same decision if the other requirements for grand jury consideration are met.
Tomder, who made the comment at the bottom of JimGunthers post #15 would rather forget that the MAIN prosecution witness in the OJ trial, a cop by the name of Mark Furman, was proven, on the witness stand, to be a LIAR and a RACIST. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that the prosecution would lose. However, they lost because the prosecutors were incompetents, not because the jury was racist.
There's an underlying issue in the Tx story: Those two were committing a crime on his neighbor. It wasn't his right to use deadly force and for that he should face the repercussions.
However, if I see my neighbor being assaulted, and I know I could be next, if nobody can stop the bad guy, shouldn't I take steps to halt the assault on my neighbor?
What if that neighbor was you, Ex? If they chose to beat you because you were in the house, instead of robbing an empty house, would you want me to phone the police and wait for them to come?
Or would you rather have me persuade the bad guy's to stop right now?
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