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You said that the juror in question cost the taxpayers money by voting the way they did - the trial was already taking place - so the decision did not cost any additional money - and money was saved because a person wasn't sent to prison on a constitutionally dubious charge.
If you are so worried about money being wasted - then you and I should be in agreement that the defendant should have never been even charged.
No, we are not. It's not my place as a citizen to decide which laws I will follow and which ones I won't follow. Neither is it the place of a juror who takes an oath to follow the law to decide that he is above that law because he thinks the law is unconstitutional. He should have told the court and the attorneys in the jury selection that he didn't think that the laws in those cases were constitutional and he didn't feel he could follow them!!
If the court had known that the trial was going to be a sham because one juror decided to usurp the power of the jury by disregarding the laws, there wouldn't have been a trial at all. In fact, it wasn't a fair jury trial. Where do you people get this idea that you can sit on a jury and disregard the laws of the state or the federal justice system? If you disagree with the laws, you should NOT agree to be on a jury and lie when you are sworn in as a juror.
If you were on trial, would you want ONE lay person to decided your guilty or innocence? If people want one person to make that decision they can choose to have a trial by judge rather than jury. When defendants decide they want a JURY trial, they want either 6 or 12 people to decided guilt or innocence.
You realize you broke the law, don't you? The cases you sat on as a juror were not really jury trials because you usurped the power of the 12-person or 6-person jury when YOU decided that you didn't think those offenses should be crimes and hung the jury. You decided those cases all by yourself. That's NOT the way the system should work. So many people complain so bitterly about how the system is broken, and you've just given us a good example of that very thing. People who sit on juries must take their oaths seriously and agree to the rules and laws set out for them. When you take it upon yourself to determine the case all by yourself based on what you think should or should not be the law you have cheated and you caused the system fail. I'm sure you must not have answered the questions asked by the attorneys and judge during jury selection completely honestly because if you had you would never have been selected. I know that they ask jurors if they can follows the law as given to them by the court, and if you had said, no, which is what you did during your deliberations, there is no way you would have been selected.
I did follow the judges instructions, but I also follow my constitutional duty to deliver my verdict on both the case and the law. I found both laws illegal and voted to not convict.
slavery also used to be the law of the land, and northern states voted not to convict people for disobeying those same laws. jury nullification does work.
Last edited by monkeywrenching; 04-23-2012 at 04:39 PM..
If you were on trial, would you want ONE lay person to decided your guilty or innocence? If people want one person to make that decision they can choose to have a trial by judge rather than jury. When defendants decide they want a JURY trial, they want either 6 or 12 people to decided guilt or innocence.
One person cannot decide guilt or innocennce - it takes a unanimous(and in some cases a strong majority) vote for any defendant to be found guilty or not guilty(or liable - as the case may be). When their are holdout jurors(such a bad term - it makes it sound as if they are doing something wrong by voting against what the majority does) a hung jury is the result - which if the conflict cannot be resolved - results in a mistrial. A mistrial result does not have any bearing on decisions of guilt or innocence - a defendant is still considered innocent until proven guilty - and may be retried at the prosecutors discretion.
Back to your hypothetical - if I were on trial and was not guilty - would I want one person to hang the jury? Absolutly! - it would be the second best outcome to an acquittal.
All the uproar over the Casey Anthony trial made me wonder.... Have you ever sat on a jury?
If got the a great jury story for you. I got called to jury duty while I was a college student. At the time I had no car and rode the bus to get around. I get on the bus and set next to this woman who's kind of hot. We start chatting nothing happens just two people having a pleasant conversation.
When I down to the courthouse I spent all morning on the jury poll. After lunch I wait about another hour or so until a bailiff get a bunch of us and leads up to the court room. We get in a courtroom and we down in the area with jurors usually sit. Low and behold the woman that I was chatting with on the bus is the defendant in the case.
No, we are not. It's not my place as a citizen to decide which laws I will follow and which ones I won't follow. Neither is it the place of a juror who takes an oath to follow the law to decide that he is above that law because he thinks the law is unconstitutional. He should have told the court and the attorneys in the jury selection that he didn't think that the laws in those cases were constitutional and he didn't feel he could follow them!!
If the court had known that the trial was going to be a sham because one juror decided to usurp the power of the jury by disregarding the laws, there wouldn't have been a trial at all. In fact, it wasn't a fair jury trial. Where do you people get this idea that you can sit on a jury and disregard the laws of the state or the federal justice system? If you disagree with the laws, you should NOT agree to be on a jury and lie when you are sworn in as a juror.
If you were on trial, would you want ONE lay person to decided your guilty or innocence? If people want one person to make that decision they can choose to have a trial by judge rather than jury. When defendants decide they want a JURY trial, they want either 6 or 12 people to decided guilt or innocence.
it is the duty of the prosecutor to try the criminal, it is the duty of the judge to make sure the laws of court are followed, and it is the duty of the jury to find the guild, innocense and constitutionality of the law in question.
try reading up on jury nullification. it has been here since the USA was founded.
just so you know, the violation of AWB94 case was not retried. the drug case, the posession charge was dropped and the defendant pled to a lesser charge at a later date for traffiking.
maybe if people started voting for more jury nullification, alot of these unconstitutional laws would be gone really fast.
You said that the juror in question cost the taxpayers money by voting the way they did - the trial was already taking place - so the decision did not cost any additional money - and money was saved because a person wasn't sent to prison on a constitutionally dubious charge.
If you are so worried about money being wasted - then you and I should be in agreement that the defendant should have never been even charged. As you can see by what monkeywrench said - in that particular case, a mistrial was declared and the prosecutors declined to retry the case - mw did a good thing by sending the message directly from the citizens that the law under question was not good - and hopefully the prosecutors will stop filing certain drug and weapons charges if enough jurors take a stand and fully exercise their ability to judge the law along with the facts.
Since you added more to your post after I answered it the first time, let me continue.
If monkeywrench informed the prosecutor of what he did, he would be in big trouble. So what makes you think that the prosecutor would get a "message" that the jury did not "approve" of the charges against the defendants in those cases? Are we really sure that the prosecutors didn't bring those cases up for retrial? How do we know they didn't. Did monkeywrench follow those cases for months to see what happened?
Bottom line, is when you ignore the oath you take to be a juror, and you lie during jury selection, you have CHEATED the system.
Since you added more to your post after I answered it the first time, let me continue.
So what makes you think that the prosecutor would get a "message" that the jury did not "approve" of the charges against the defendants in those cases? .
Prosecutors don't enjoy racking up strings of mistrials - or acquittals - eventually they will realize that the jurors aren't very happy being asked to render guilty verdicts in those cases and will stop filing them.
Research jury nullification - wikipedia, though not a great source is a good start and will inform you about the history of JN in U.S. history. Many bad laws have been repealed because jurors refused to convict defendants whose trials they heard. Jurors are part of our system of checks and balances - informed jurors are a primary line of defense against tyranny.
it is the duty of the prosecutor to try the criminal, it is the duty of the judge to make sure the laws of court are followed, and it is the duty of the jury to find the guild, innocense and constitutionality of the law in question.
try reading up on jury nullification. it has been here since the USA was founded.
just so you know, the violation of AWB94 case was not retried. the drug case, the posession charge was dropped and the defendant pled to a lesser charge at a later date for traffiking.
maybe if people started voting for more jury nullification, alot of these unconstitutional laws would be gone really fast.
Seems to me that jury nullification would have been if the jury decided to find not guilty because the entire jury thought the laws were unconstitutional and therefore wanted to send a message, jury nullification.
You simply blocked the jury's decision to convict by holding out. Did you tell your fellow jurors that you were voting not guilty in order to accomplish jury nullification? Did you tell the prosecutor what you did and why?
Did you know when you were sworn in as a juror that you would not follow the law because you thought it was unconstitutional? In other words, did you lie when you took the oath?
Btw, taking a plea is NOT choosing to not prosecute again. Your jury nullification attempt accomplished nothing in that case.
p.s. What do you mean by "laws of the court"? There are state laws and federal laws, and RULES of procedure for courts.
Prosecutors don't enjoy racking up strings of mistrials - or acquittals - eventually they will realize that the jurors aren't very happy being asked to render guilty verdicts in those cases and will stop filing them.
Research jury nullification - wikipedia, though not a great source is a good start and will inform you about the history of JN in U.S. history. Many bad laws have been repealed because jurors refused to convict defendants whose trials they heard. Jurors are part of our system of checks and balances - informed jurors are a primary line of defense against tyranny.
I've read up on it a little bit and I still think that monkeywrench cheated. If the intent is to make a statement by jury nullification, then did he inform the prosecutor after the verdict what he did?
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