COMMON JURY NULLIFICATIONS
Jury nullification, we are told, is the wrongful act of telling a jury of its right, power, duty to disregard the jury instructions, given to it by the courts, and to follow their human consciences and experiences in deliberating, arriving at the verdict.
Jury instructions are unseen levers that the public does not see, which direct the jurors in deciding a case. They tell a jury the applicable law and what they may not do or consider in arriving at their verdict .
One thing that they may not do is to place themselves in the position of a party; not to sympathize nor to empathize ; emotions are removed.
When sympathy and empathy are removed, that act leaves antipathy.
Antipathy is unjust, brutal, wicked. It is a value, perspective of racism, bias, prejudice, oppression, unfair.
If, despite all of that, if a jury may yet decide a case, other than in accordance with legal design, a judge might still set the verdict aside, or an appeals court might.
So jury nullification is more than a lawyer telling the jury to disregard the jury instructions and be fair.
A jury that is given mandatory jury instructions requiring that they be unfair, inhumane, by showing antipathy to its facts is sedulously being made, instructed, to view the case from the perspective of emotionless drones or unfair crones of an unjust system.
The ultimate jury nullification is the act of setting aside the verdict by a judge or an appeals court for error.
Now a facade of fairness must be maintained, while these silent assassins of justice do the deed: dissemble their perfidy behind veils of purity, to disguise their injustices, while pretending to have been fair in every legal respect; all the time being the exact opposite: unfair, unjust, inhumane, in guiding its outcome.
I have experienced jury nullification in Missouri as a plaintiff's or civil rights attorney on multiple times. So I know whereof I have written.
Additionally, my reading the book by Lea Vandervelde REDEMPTION SONGS: SUING FOR FREEDOM BEFORE DRED SCOTT (2014) was instructive. It was about the early slave "freedom suits" that were brought in St. Louis, Missouri, immediately after its 1821 statehood, successfully. They were brought by hundreds of Missouri slaves. The slaves were aided by lawyers, whose fees and expenses were then paid by the state, in cases that were tried before all-white judges and juries, but who won, anyway, even in slavery days, in a slave state! I have also read how the laws enabling slave freedom were later abused, misused over time to discourage and to prevent this anomalous outcome, as it did with "Dred Scott" in order to assure slaves a harsher, unjust result under law!
So jury nullification is all-to-real and is all-too-common in too many jury trials.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
JURY NULLIFICATION
COMMON JURY NULLIFICATIONS
Jury nullification, we are told, is the wrongful act of telling a jury of its right, power, duty to disregard the jury instructions, given to it by the courts, and to follow their human consciences and experiences in deliberating, arriving at the verdict.
Jury instructions are unseen levers that the public does not see, which direct the jurors in deciding a case. They tell a jury the applicable law and what they may not do or consider in arriving at their verdict .
One thing that they may not do is to place themselves in the position of a party; not to sympathize nor to empathize ; emotions are removed.
When sympathy and empathy are removed, that act leaves antipathy.
Antipathy is unjust, brutal, wicked. It is a value, perspective of racism, bias, prejudice, oppression, unfair.
If, despite all of that, if a jury may yet decide a case, other than in accordance with legal design, a judge might still set the verdict aside, or an appeals court might.
So jury nullification is more than a lawyer telling the jury to disregard the jury instructions and be fair.
A jury that is given mandatory jury instructions requiring that they be unfair, inhumane, by showing antipathy to its facts is sedulously being made, instructed, to view the case from the perspective of emotionless drones or unfair crones of an unjust system.
The ultimate jury nullification is the act of setting aside the verdict by a judge or an appeals court for error.
Now a facade of fairness must be maintained, while these silent assassins of justice do the deed: dissemble their perfidy behind veils of purity, to disguise their injustices, while pretending to have been fair in every legal respect; all the time being the exact opposite: unfair, unjust, inhumane, in guiding its outcome.
I have experienced jury nullification in Missouri as a plaintiff's or civil rights attorney on multiple times. So I know whereof I have written.
Additionally, my reading the book by Lea Vandervelde REDEMPTION SONGS: SUING FOR FREEDOM BEFORE DRED SCOTT (2014) was instructive. It was about the early slave "freedom suits" that were brought in St. Louis, Missouri, immediately after its 1821 statehood, successfully. They were brought by hundreds of Missouri slaves. The slaves were aided by lawyers, whose fees and expenses were then paid by the state, in cases that were tried before all-white judges and juries, but who won, anyway, even in slavery days, in a slave state! I have also read how the laws enabling slave freedom were later abused, misused over time to discourage and to prevent this anomalous outcome, as it did with "Dred Scott" in order to assure slaves a harsher, unjust result under law!
So jury nullification is all-to-real and is all-too-common in too many jury trials.
