Yes, Jury Nullification has been used for evil. But it's also been used for good, and I feel like you're missing that. You didn't include any historical cases where it has been used for good, such as when northerners refused to allow black slaves to be returned to slavery.
I think that, if you told juries about Jury Nullification, then they would probably free more just people then free unjust people. After all, the rich and powerful can already tell and bribe jurors about jury nullification, so I don't think that telling everyone would benefit the rich. That being said, I think telling jurors about Jury Nullification would cause defenses to be more focused on appealing to the Juror's emotions rather than the law, so it's probably a bad idea. Still, I disagree with your conclusion that Jury Nullification is primarily a force of evil.
Jury nullification, as I understood it, was never about rejecting the law or the Constitution.
It was about declaring the right of the jury to interpret the law or the Constitution. And the jury has always had the right under common law to interpret the law. This is baked into the Bill of Rights.
Judges often get the law wrong in incredibly blatant and corrupt ways. We all know that "qualified immunity" is made-up shit; law review articles have demonstrated clearly that it never had any legal basis whatsoever. Any serious jury, reading the Fourteenth Amendment and the KKK Act, would typically get the law *right* when the judge got the law *wrong*, and that is why the ultimate power to determine the law rests in the hands of the jury, despite the claims of some judges.
The 9th amendment is perhaps the most extreme example of this. Natural rights, retained by the people -- who better to determine which of these exist than the consensus agreement of 12 random people? If someone's conviction would be an infringement on a 9th amendment right, the jury has every right to determine that, even if a judge doesn't want to think about it (as most judges do not want to).
Jury nullification is about the jury's right to read the Constitution and read the laws themselves, rather than cowering to "judge's instructions" which may be quite lawless and unconstitutional. That's what it's actually about.
Yes, Jury Nullification has been used for evil. But it's also been used for good, and I feel like you're missing that. You didn't include any historical cases where it has been used for good, such as when northerners refused to allow black slaves to be returned to slavery.
I think that, if you told juries about Jury Nullification, then they would probably free more just people then free unjust people. After all, the rich and powerful can already tell and bribe jurors about jury nullification, so I don't think that telling everyone would benefit the rich. That being said, I think telling jurors about Jury Nullification would cause defenses to be more focused on appealing to the Juror's emotions rather than the law, so it's probably a bad idea. Still, I disagree with your conclusion that Jury Nullification is primarily a force of evil.
Jury nullification, as I understood it, was never about rejecting the law or the Constitution.
It was about declaring the right of the jury to interpret the law or the Constitution. And the jury has always had the right under common law to interpret the law. This is baked into the Bill of Rights.
Judges often get the law wrong in incredibly blatant and corrupt ways. We all know that "qualified immunity" is made-up shit; law review articles have demonstrated clearly that it never had any legal basis whatsoever. Any serious jury, reading the Fourteenth Amendment and the KKK Act, would typically get the law *right* when the judge got the law *wrong*, and that is why the ultimate power to determine the law rests in the hands of the jury, despite the claims of some judges.
The 9th amendment is perhaps the most extreme example of this. Natural rights, retained by the people -- who better to determine which of these exist than the consensus agreement of 12 random people? If someone's conviction would be an infringement on a 9th amendment right, the jury has every right to determine that, even if a judge doesn't want to think about it (as most judges do not want to).
Jury nullification is about the jury's right to read the Constitution and read the laws themselves, rather than cowering to "judge's instructions" which may be quite lawless and unconstitutional. That's what it's actually about.