Slashdot Mirror
How To Crash the US Justice System: Demand a Trial
Hugh Pickens writes "The U.S. Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including a fair and speedy jury trial, but in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation's prison population has quintupled in a few decades — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury, in part because the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. 'The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,' says Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. Now Susan Burton, head of 'A New Way of Life' (PDF), is helping to start a movement to demand restoration of Americans' basic civil and human rights by asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. 'Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?' Burton says if everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation."
Jury nullification undermines the legal process and is not a good thing in any way.
You can get all romantic about the thought of saving some young guy from jail for drugs possession but would you find it so noble if a Klan member got away with murdering an innocent African American youth by his all white jury? How about an innocent man who clearly didn't commit murder being found guilty because he was gay and the jury thought homosexuals were sinful and he deserved to be punished anyway?
Laws are put into place by people elected by millions of voters. A single (or even a sizable minority) person in a Jury undermining this because of his personal, political views is democratic and goes against the whole principle of justice being blind. This is why any judge (and lawyers for both sides) worth their salt, are on the lookout for people looking to attempt jury nullification and if you lie to them in order to try it out... Enjoy being found in contempt (or worse).