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The jury nullification rodents appear to be coming out of the woodwork again. Jury nullification is one of the worst political ideas ever devised. "Yes, the death penalty for disorderly conduct does sound a little extreme at first. But, you and I know that this law would never be used against the good people of this community. No, it will only be used against those goddamned perverted freaks -- you know the ones I mean. And why? Why, my friends, it's because we have jury nullification -- and who ends up on juries? Why, it's good, ordinary people like you and me." Now, I doubt that I could get elected with this speech -- but, then, I doubt if I could get a sailor to follow me into a whorehouse. Think of your favorite political nightmare -- yes, that guy -- making this speech during his campaign. Feel differently? A lot of jury nullifiers will proclaim, "Oh, but that's a strawman -- the higher courts will overturn any ridiculous verdicts". Aside from the fact that the overturning of acquitals on appeal is as uncommon as finding a two-headed snake, we might ask, "Overturning a verdict on what grounds?" Notice that we've just tossed both stare decisis and the 14th Amendment out of the window here; a jury must be reckoned to be bound neither, as far as acquiting a defendant goes ("Yep, the victim had it coming"). Most signiificantly of all, this destroys the rule of law as a concept. An oft-used argument against federalism is that the average person can't be expected to follow n+1 codes of law (where the federation has n members, and the federation has its own law). Here, however, the average person cannot even know what the law truly is ("Nope, haven't convicted anyone on this law in forty years -- course, we don't like the way that you wear your hair, so you'll probably be the first"). It's entirely dependent on what jury you draw for your case -- maybe they'll convict, and maybe they'll decided that the law shouldn't be followed -- but you won't know until the trial. John "Akatsukami" Braue Tuesday, May 14, 2002 |
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