Just thought more people should know about this cause… CGP Grey is awesome.
Sorry to post something that should be in the you should know community… but that’s in lemmy.world which would take this down.
Please let me know if I should post this somewhere else.
Having been on jury duty a few times in my life, it’s really difficult to be on a jury if you have strong opinions and outwardly express it.
So if you believe in jury nullification, you better look like a pushover, and be really good at keeping a poker face.
Careful, if they find your lemmy account (or any online accounts for that matter) and see comments like these, you could get a contempt of court / perjury charge.
Remember your Tor and VPN
Stay safe!
First amendment says no. Where people have been charged, it has been for influencing selected jurors and candidates, not the general public.
We could establish law requiring juries to be instructed on their power to nullify. It’s not particularly difficult.
What I mean is, they could ask you: Do you know anything about Jury Nullification?
And if you say yes, you are not gonna be selected.
And if you lie to get on Jury, boom, Perjury and Contempt of Court.
Edit: So the purposes of VPN and Tor and an anonymous Lemmy account is to hide the fact that you are lying so you can get in the Jury without them knowing that you know about Jury Nullification.
The problem is they aren’t going to ask that, since it acknowledges jury nullification exists and just by asking the question you’ll lead a non zero number of jurors to look it up, ruining the jury.
They ask “Is there anything that would prevent you from rendering a guilty verdict if there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt?”
It’s a catch-all for jury nullification as well as other things, like bigotry (i.e. “Well obviously if there’s a black victim and a white defendant I’m not voting guilty.”)
It’s not a lie. Jury nullification does not involve any sort of lying.
The judge will ask you if you can follow the law as it is written. The written law gives laypersons to use their layperson judgement to determine guilt or innocence. That’s derived from the supreme law of the land. Can you follow the supreme law of the land and exercise your judgment as a layperson?
The government is a creation of that law. That government cannot supersede the authority of the law that created it. That government cannot demand that you must exclusively follow those lesser laws that it creates. If you were to ask “Is the constitution part of the written laws I am to follow?”, the only legitimate answer is “Yes, Of course”. But, if asked, that answer will likely be followed by “You are excused with our thanks.” Fortunately, you already know the answer to that question, so you don’t need to ask it. You just need to fulfill your duty, comfortable in the understanding that your duty is as a peer of the defendant, not as an agent of the government.
Until the 6th amendment is repealed, it is not a lie to agree to follow the full law as it is written, even if the government is only willing to provide you instructions involving a small part of a lesser law.