muhly22222
Posts: 463
Joined: 3/25/2010 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Level Do any of you voting Guilty believe that juror nullification is ever viable? Just curious, not taking a swipe at your votes. Sure do, but I'm not exactly unbiased (criminal defense is a big part of my practice). I think it's more viable in situations where the law itself is written unfairly than in situations like this one. There are a number of badly drafted laws (especially criminal statutes), many of which were enacted in response to some specific event (which was usually already illegal). There are also times where a system is set up which isn't fair. For instance, in Ohio, when a person is charged with OVI, they are not allowed to challenge the general reliability of the machine that was used to test them, provided that the State Department of Health has certified the machine as one that may be used for that test. But that certification is not done in a way that is contested or open to public objection. So people are convicted without any evidence being presented that the machine (a breathalyzer, for instance) actually works in the way the police/prosecutors say it works. It depends on the individual case whether I would deem jury nullification viable. If it looks like the government is railroading the defendant, or that the system is set up to cause a person to fall afoul of it, or a law doesn't make any rational sense...jury nullification is perfectly ok, because the important thing in those situations is that the result be the right one, rather than the proper process being followed.
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I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. -Woodrow Wilson
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