Jury Nullification

[Truth_Bringer]

Another valid method of reform to be used in conjunction with all the rest (voting, contributing to political campaigns, civil disobedience, etc.):

"It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." - John Adams, 1771

".....it is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact." - Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia," 1782

"Another apprehension [about the French Revolution] is, that a majority cannot be induced to adopt the trial by jury; and I consider that as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution...." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Tom Paine, 1789

"It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision.....you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794

"Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction...if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong." - Alexander Hamilton, 1804

"Petty juries, consisting usually of twelve men, attend courts to try matters of fact in civil causes, and to decide both the law and the fact in criminal prosecutions. The decision of a petty jury is called a verdict." - Noah Webster, Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision." - 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, United States v. Moylan, 1969

"[The jury has an] unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law." - D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Unites States v. Dougherty, 1972

"The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts." - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Horning v. District of Columbia, 1920

"It is universally conceded that a verdict of acquittal, although rendered against the instructions of the judge, is final, and cannot be set aside; and consequently that the jury have the legal power to decide for themselves the law involved in the general issues of guilty or not guilty." - Justices Gray and Shiras, Sparf and Hansen v. United States, 1894, dissent

http://www.crfc.org/americanjury/nullification.html

http://www.fija.org