I’ve been reading a lot about jury nullification, and I get that jurors have the power to acquit someone even if the law technically says they’re guilty. But what I don’t get is—why is this something that exists, yet courts don’t allow it to be talked about during a trial?
If it’s a legitimate part of the legal system, why is it treated like a secret? Would a juror get in trouble for mentioning it during deliberations? And what would happen if someone brought it up during jury selection?
I’m just curious how this all works in practice. If jurors can ultimately do whatever they want, what stops them from using nullification all the time?
That doesn’t really check out.
In the US the constitution defines how a court is supposed to be run. It’s more or less identical to the English system, which was never defined in a constitution but just evolved over a millennia.
There were no founding fathers who wrote a document to include this “ultimate check”.
Additionally, if this were an intended “ultimate check” it would become “the way” that court cases are resolved. A judge would merely be a steward conducting proceedings and a jury would just mete out justice based on the vibe of the matters before them.
The far more obvious reason jury nullification is possible is what I’ve already said - jurors need to be able to make a finding of guilt or innocence free from retribution. The deleterious side effect of this freedom is that jurors can say “this whole system stinks and we find the defendant to be purple”, without any consequence.
Its an opinion. There is no way to know what the intention of the peer jury system is as there is nothing they said in either direction for it. I actually think it was intended even before the us but in some historical context it was an elite who was allowed to be on the jury and not ever voting citizen. In the same way they could control the enforcement of the law.
Some opinions are more poorly considered than others.
I 100% agree.