Comment on Why is Jury Nullification a Thing, But You Can’t Talk About It in Court?
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day agowhat 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?
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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.