Juries Don't Have To Accept Trumped-Up Charges

"In modern parlance, some of the jurors "nullified" the case: They decided that a tyrannical law was not worth enforcing. And they were right. 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."

Jury nullification allows jurors to acquit defendants when they believe a law is unjust. In 1851 abolitionists freed Shadrach Minkins, an escaped slave detained under the Fugitive Slave Act; Robert Morris was indicted but a jury did not convict despite the law. The Supreme Court's 1895 U.S. v. Sparf limited juries from being instructed to decide the law, yet juries retain de facto nullification because judges cannot overturn not-guilty verdicts. Nullification has been used both to resist oppressive laws and to shield atrocities such as lynching by all-white Southern juries, revealing tension between law and conscience.

Read at The Atlantic