What is Jury Nullification?
Even if the prosecution produces all the evidence necessary to convict and the judge tells the jury it should find the defendant guilty, the jury can still find a person not guilty, just cuz. The jury has the right to decide the case however it pleases for any reason, no reason or the wrong reason, and no one in the system can challenge it. Truly, what happens in the jury room, stays in the jury room. You will never hear anyone in court argue that the jury should behave this way. It is improper to do so, and really it is important for jurors to follow their duties and the instructions given to them and try to achieve as fair a result as possible. A system that openly operated on the random whim of the 12 people picked to be the jury that day would certainly be unfair.
Please seek out the Fully Informed Jury Association! (http://www.fija.org). Also, Whitten’s Citizen Rule Book has good info on your rights and responsibilites as a juror. When you sit on a Jury, you have more power than as almost under any other capacity as a citizen, 1000 times more power than when you vote. You have more power than the judge, than the legislators, than the police. You have a right and a duty to judge the facts according to the law, AND TO JUDGE THE LAW ITSELF! Jury Nullification is when a jury nullifies bad law. A jury can say “not guilty” for ANY reason, especially if the jury thinks the person violated a law, but finds that the law was a bad one. Research what happened to Edward Bushnell, who sat on the jury of William Penn, accused of practicing an illegal religion. Also research how Jury Nullification helped eliminate prohibition. (Well, of course I mean alcohol prohibition.
