SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor Favors Jury Nullification | Hacker News Reader

SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor Favors Jury Nullification

fija.org

17 pointsmiles14 comments

Jury nullification is a powerful tool for reining in prosecutorial overreach, and for correcting perceived injustice in corner-cases (pun intended).

This is about the only topic on which I agree with Justice Sotomayor.

I generally disagree with her as well, but her recent dissent on Utah v. Strieff was pretty good. Almost sounded like Scalia rose from the dead to write a few paragraphs.

Just read that, and I think Sotomayor nailed it. I also thought it was too bad that Scalia wasn't part of the case---perhaps he could have turned the tide.

I always wanted to be a juror in a marijuana trial so I could educate the other jurors about nullification.

During jury selection the judge will ask if you deliver a guilty verdict if the defendant is guilty. When you say no, you're off the jury.

If you lie the judge will kick you off the jury when he figures out you're lying. He'll be angry, and he can fine or jail you if he wants to make a point.

I'm not sure jurors can be jailed. Do you have precedent for this?

A judge can absolutely jail you for contempt of court. And he pretty much gets to decide what that means. It's unlikely you'd get jailed for this kind of thing, but it's not impossible.

so, no precedent of a judge citing a juror for contempt, then?

Is Google really that hard to use? Did you think maybe you might look at the jury nullification wiki page?

Relevant: Doug Stanhope on Jury Duty (language NSFW):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp-5rvtSpak

Does this mean states can refuse to accept federal laws?

It's one thing to say that in a speech before a friendly audience.

It's quite another to actually apply it in a decision.

Has she ever done the latter at any Federal court level?

Most likely; she also likely made a plausible argument for her position too, even though she knew said argument was flawed.

It would be interesting to poll juries after a ruling to see if they're even aware of the power of jury nullification; my guess is the answer is no.

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