Comment on Why is Jury Nullification a Thing, But You Can’t Talk About It in Court?

null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

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.

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