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This time, I've been summoned for a Michigan state court. Of course, I have no idea if I'll get picked again or what the case will be about, and even if I did, I couldn't discuss it at all. However, at this point, all this jury duty stuff has driven me to blog about an aspect of it that I think is very important, but not very well-known: the right of jury nullification.
Judges and prosecuting attorneys really don't like jury nullification. They rarely, if ever, inform jurors of the right. In fact, most of the time they will tell jurors that they do not have the right and must find solely based on the facts of the case. This, however, is not entirely true.
Juries also have the right to judge not only the facts of the case against the defendant but also the justness of the law itself, and whether that law is being applied justly in the case. In other words, a jury may refuse to convict an obviously guilty defendant who's only crime is breaking a law they believe shouldn't exist in the first place, if they believe the law is being applied unjustly against the defendant, or if they believe the defendant was justified in breaking the law under the circumstances.
For example, a sympathetic jury could acquit a person accused and obviously guilty of stealing food to keep his family from starving to death - this would be an instance of a just law being applied un-justly to the defendant. For another example, a jury who disagreed with marijuana prohibition laws could acquit the guy caught "green handed" with a bag of weed. In this way, juries - composed notably of randomly selected, ordinary people - stand in judgment over the laws and activities of the state and the exercise of its power.
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So, my dear readers (yes, all 12 of you, ha ha), you may now consider yourselves informed. If nothing else, it may provide you with an easy way to get out of jury duty if the case is a criminal one and involves a controversial law.
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