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Juror From RIAA Trial Speaks
Damon Tog notes a Wired blog posting featuring quotes from a juror who took part in the recent RIAA trial. Some excerpts: "She should have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars... Spoofing? We're thinking, "Oh my God, you got to be kidding."... She lied. There was no defense. Her defense sucked... I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naive. We're not that stupid up here. I don't know what the f**k she was thinking, to tell you the truth."
That's called "jury nullification" and judges hate it because there's not a damned thing they can do about it. In fact, attorneys are forbidden to mention the concept in their arguments. If the jury in this case had decided to do that, the RIAA would have had no grounds for appeal, because the jury is the *only* arbiter of fact. You can appeal decisions of the judge, but not the actual jury decision. IANAL and all that, but that's how I understand it.
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But in this case, as I understand things, there was a deliberate effort by the prosecution to mislead the judge and jury about the outcome of another critically relevant case in which it was decided that making available != distributing. Therefore, the finding of facts in this case may have been based on a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the law, and thus completely invalid.
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Sorry, but Jury Nullification, while having deeply entrenched common law roots, is not as cut and dry as you may think it is. Many court cases, including some from notable power courts such as the Supreme Court of California have held that Jury Nullification is "contrary to [the court's] ideal of justice of equal justice for all and permits both the prosecution's case and the defendant's fate to depend upon the whims of a particular jury, rather than upon the equal application of settled rules of law." People v. Williams (2001) 25 Cal.4th 441, 463
Also, just from browsing the Wiki article you linked there are many examples of court cases in which Jury Nullification has either been criticized or not been held to be a viable option for juries. See U.S. v. Krzyske 836 F.2d 1013, 1021 (Upholding on appeal a judge's answer to a juror that jury nullification "didn't exist") and U.S. v. Thomas 116 F.3d 606 (2d Cir. 1997) (holding that jurors can be removed if there is evidence that they are planning on utilizing jury nullification)
Now, I'm in no way advocating the removal of the concept of jury nullification from our system, but I'm simply stating that to just throw out such a blanket action as the answer to this question doesn't help much because the action itself is under attack by significant powers in the legal realm. At least IMO, it seems like it would make much more sense to focus on electing a decent legislative body to reject these rules, rather than holding out for jury nullification that really only works as a one shot deal to begin with.
No, the jury is free to vote with its conscience. The juror's conscience is the final line of defense against an immoral and unjust law. The beginning of the end of Canada's old abortion laws came when juries repeatedly refused to convict a doctor of providing abortion services, which finally clued in the politicians to the fact that the winds of public opinion were turning against the law.
If you are on a jury and feel that the law was unjustly applied, nobody can stop you from putting your foot down and refusing to convict.
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You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Bankruptcy doesn't take your retirement savings or home unless you have used the home to secure a loan that you are in default on, and even then you can often work out a way to keep the home. You are also often allowed to keep a cheap car and tools that you need for your job. The idea is that the bankruptcy process should not leave you as a ward of the state, rather it is a way of keeping creditors off your back so you can repay at least some of the money.
She also had the hard drive wiped by the geek squad and they testified that it was due to a legit windows problem. The geek squad guy was also asked of the defendants music buying habbits at bestbuy. The defendant was a huge purchaser of music cds.
The jury had the option of fixing penalties at $750 per song. They opted for more than 10x that.
On that, I have to agree with you. Though I have to admit, it doesn't do much for my personal opinion of the naivete of Duluthites.
Says who?
Says anyone who understands why we have juries of our peers rather than juries of government-appointed experts, when the latter could incontrovertibly do a much better job of deciding the facts of the case.
Jury nullification, not the USSC or the presidential pardon, represents the final and most effective of the "checks and balances" on government abuse of power.
You can name the guy. Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Over and above the caes cited in the previous link, he was also tried 3 times for running abortion clinics, and 3 times, jurors refused to convict. This was around the same time that Jean-guy Trmblay tried to prevent his girlfriend (Chantale Daigle) from getting an abortion. Turns out the creep was a control freak, and liked using his fists. Here's what happened 10 years later.
Do I dare say "typical right-to-life control freak"? Well, maybe not typical, but certainly in retrospect his motivations had more to do with control and getting back at someone who had the "audacity" to dump the creep than with any concern for any potential offspring.
You certainly are. You meant to say, "I think she was probably informed by the plaintiff that she had committed a tort.
civil case != criminal case.
Actually, you do, and this is well established in English jurisprudence. William Penn was on trial for preaching Quakerism in the streets. The jury was instructed to convict because he was indeed preaching and it was indeed against the law. The jury refused to convict. The judge sent them back. They still refused. He threw them in jail. They still refused. He put them on bread and water rations. They still refused. Finally he gave up and accepted their acquittal. And ever since then juries have been able to vote according to their conscience rather than the law.
It's also equally well established that you can't tell people about it in the context of a court case (except during jury deliberations). Otherwise you would ALWAYS have lawyers attempting to get the jury to nullify.
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Stealing or copyright infringement? It makes a difference!
> probability states that it would be worthwhile putting one of a thousand guns to your head,
> where only one was loaded, and pulling the trigger if the reward was a million dollers upon survival.
Uh, no. Probability and expectation theory only deals in uniform ideal units. Your example contains two different units: "death" and "dollar". You're confusing probability theory with utility theory here. Or with a combination of probability and utility theory.
E.g., if the person pulling the trigger knows he is sick and most likely will die in great pain within several weeks, I wouldn't think it at all extraordinary for him to take this wager. In his case the utility of death vs. money is different than for others (you, for example, it seems).
And in the downloader's case, in many cases the downloaded product has a higher utility (e.g., no DRM) than the product he can attain legally. And what the relative utility of being sued by RIAA is for him is dependent on what he thinks, not what you think.
I'd point out that her hard drive was confirmed as damaged, Toast I think was the word used, by a Geek Squad employee. I'd also point out that this occurred PRIOR to her being informed that she was under any sort of investigation. To penalize her for this, as apparently occurred, seems wrong to me. The jurors comments about her benig stupid for not accepting a deal for a few K also appear to show some prejudice, I look at it as she could've gotten off cheap but fought instead which to me shows a tendency to believe that she might have been innocent not to think her stupid. Lastly, the woman was also an avid music purchaser according to her BestBuy purchase records. Someone who has the mentality to purchase that much music (hundreds of CDs was it?) was downloading and sharing freely? I wonder if that's really so likely. I find it interesting too that they claim to have some sort of fingerprint from her cable modem, what might that be? Surely not a MAC address unless it was provided by the cable company and I'd bet that their record keeping deserves a good looking over - particularly if they're a small one. I'd like to read over the transcripts of this, I'm not convinced, yet, that it's really so cut and dry based on at least some of the evidence quoted in a previous /. story.
Most damning IMO was the userID etc. that was being used. Certainly if anything this would seem to teach that it's best to use someone ELSE'S handle when using a service like Kazaa
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If you go back and read some history, you'll find that a goodly chunk of the first Americans thought jury nullification is a right. I could quote a bunch of famous people, or give you the long history of Bushel's case, Zenger's case. I encourage you to educate yourself and look at both cases, in which jury nullification was upheld as a juror's right in the English common law (which, by the way, where do you think the rights protected by the 9th Amendment are most likely to spring from?).
No, I will quote only one authority: "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision... you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy" -- John Jay, First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, State Of Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. 1,4 (1794).