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?
This is a super unpopular opinion in 2025, but I’m a grown up and happy to take the downvotes.
Jury Nullification isn’t really a “thing” as in it’s not intended to be a function available to the jury.
The justice system intends for Jury’s to perform a very specific function: to find a defendant guilty or not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
However, jurors must be able to make that determination free from any concerns as to repercussions against them. The system couldn’t work if a juror feared being held responsible for their finding. Imagine if overlooking or misinterpreting something as a juror could be a crime? It would present a very ready mechanism for corruption “Any juror that finds Trump guilty will be subject to prosecution by the next republican government”.
So, jurors have absolute protection from any responsibility as to their findings, and as such they are able to say “we think luigi probably did commit this crime but he seems like a great guy so our unanimous finding is not-guilty”.
It’s a subversion of the justice system. Jurors may take this third option without consequence but they are not upholding their responsibilities to the justice system.
My concern with jury nullification is that if jurors can decide whether the law should apply in whatever case, they’re essentially making up the law based on nothing more than their feelings about what happened. Additionally, it makes a court case more of a popularity contest than a fair application of the law.
The common rebuttal to what I’ve said is that the justice system is rarely just. That may be the case but justice is not going to be improved by moving to a kangaroo court. We may as well throw defendants in the river and pronounce those who do not drown to be guilty.
So many of our once-cherished standards boiled down to the presumption that certain norms would be upheld.
The justice system arises from Article III of the Constitution. The Justice system is one of the three branches of government, and is subject to the Separation of Powers.
Jurors are not members of the justice system. They aren’t members of the government. They are laypersons. Peers of the accused. They are the “We The People” mentioned in the preamble: The source whence all constitutional powers arise.
Jurors have no responsibilities to the justice system. A juror’s responsibility is to the accused. 6th Amendment.
You haven’t actually rebutted anything I’ve said.
That’s just semantics. Jurors participate for a reason.
A system where jurors just nullify cases when they don’t dig the vibe is obviously not a justice system.
The only reason the western world is falling all over themselves to believe in jury nullification is because our justice system is completely unjust and wealthy people can just string things out indefinitely.
Enlighten me. What do you think that reason is?
From where I’m sitting, you have dismissed the entire purpose of a layperson jury as “semantics”, so I would really like to know what “reason” you are talking about.
The role of the jury in criminal trials is to review questions of fact and to determine guilt or innocence according to the law.
True. But a judge can do that. A professional judge, who understands the laws he is applying.
Give your reasoning for a layperson jury.
The requirement for a jury of your peers to find you guilty ensures that a corrupt court can not make arbitrary pronouncements of guilt.
You’re getting warmer. You’ve contemplated a corrupt court.
Let’s move our hypothetical corruption to another branch: is our layperson jury supposed to apply laws written by a corrupt or incompetent legislature?
Is our layperson jury supposed to enforce laws maliciously applied by the executive?
You’re still tepid. I’m weary of this silly “what if our layperson jury stands on one foot while sucking a lemon” tete-a-tete. If you have a point then make it.
Of course a jury is supposed to apply the law.
There’s this whole other process to ensure that laws are not corrupt nor incompetent nor maliciously applied called the democratic election of law makers. If laws are unjust then the system is broken.
It’s antithetical to the democratic process to propose that 12 people can subvert the intentions of the voting populace.
I would agree with you if it worked the other way. If jurors could say: okay, he didn’t do the arson, but something’s off and he should go to jail anyway, that would not be a functional justice system. As it is, having jury nullification just makes it a looser system, nowhere near kangaroo court.
Jury nullification can be used for evil.
From Wikipedia:
“White defendants accused of crimes against black people and other minorities were often acquitted by all-white juries, especially in the South, even in the face of irrefutable evidence. An example is the trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam.”
So I do think it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
It is absolutely a mixed bag. Ideally, jury nullification would never be used, because none of our laws would be unjust or improper to apply.
But, we have had “Fugitive Slave Acts” on our books for the majority of our history: acts that criminalize providing aid and assistance to escaped slaves, or failing to deliver them to their “owners”.
We cannot pretend our legislature has never been corrupt, or will never be corrupt in the future. Jury Nullification is an important check on an out-of-control legislature.
It can, but I’d still rather criminals walk free than people who didn’t do anything wrong be punished.
I guess it comes down to this: I think twelve randos are less likely to be racist than our legal system.
what do you mean a “looser” system? Do you mean like, good baddies like luigi walk but bad baddies like mexicans or weird looking people don’t?
I mean more people generally walk away. When designing a legal system, you have to decide whether it’s better that guilty people go free or that innocent people are punished. I’m fully on the side of the former, and jury nullification is basically an extra release valve.
Luigi’s obviously a sensation right now, but jn is imo even better for situations like those sisters who lit their father on fire after he raped them for years (I don’t want to dig too deep because it’s depressing, so I don’t have a source, but this could just as easily be hypothetical). The legal system is not going to codify how much the victim must abuse you before your snapping is justified, because that’s impossible. The jury gets to decide on a case by case basis, whether the immolation was a crime or not.
In a perfect legal system, we might not need it, but not only is that impossible, the US has in some respects the farthest from a perfect system currently in place.
Sure. The problem I have with such a “release valve” is that it would be inherently unjust. Of course some defendents of a certain race or gender or appearance would be more likely to have their case nullified.
If you think courts should be more lenient, then codify it in law. The reason why it’s not codified, is because punishments are already designed to be appropriate to the crime.
I actually do feel it was intended and is part of why the founding fathers felt a jury of the peers was important. I think they intended it as the ultimate check on the system in that if despite everything some crazy laws are passed they could be kept from being enforced.
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.
“We The People”. The first three words establish the philosophical model of the constitution. “We The People” willed it into existence.
The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to a trial by a jury of the accused’s peers. Not the judicial branch of the government. Not the government in general. It guarantees the right of the accused to take the case directly to a quorum of 12 members of “We The People”.
The founding fathers did write a document that included this ultimate check.
They do. Generally, the “vibe” is that legislated law is just and proper, and the jury should apply it as written. Generally, jury nullification is not a factor.
But we are contemplating the special case. Here, we are not constrained to the general case. Here, we are considerong the conditions under which the law itself is determined to be unjust, such as the “Fugitive Slave Laws” we actually had on our books. Here, we can consider a corrupt legislature enacting unjust laws.
Are we forced to jail an abolitionist for aiding and abetting a former slave in escaping his “owner”? Are We The People truly compelled to abide by the evil acts of a reprehensible legislature?
We are not.
The fact that justice won’t always be done is not in any way a justification for rendering the unjust verdict demanded by a corrupt legislature.
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.