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Jury Nullification: When Conscience Outweighs the Law
Jury nullification presents each of us with the huge responsibility and the power to say that something is wrong and that we are going to take individual action peacefully to help change what is wrong.
By Daniel Gauss
Luigi Mangione has not had his day in court, and despite all the apparent evidence being revealed by the press, he is still not guilty until proven otherwise in a court of law. Nobody yet knows what the legal strategy of the prosecution and Mangione’s attorneys will be, however, some legal experts have publicly asserted that due to the concept of jury nullification, even if the prosecution provides rock-solid evidence, Mangione may still get one or more hung juries or may even, theoretically, walk free. So, what is jury nullification and what should we all know about it?
Jury nullification is when jurors choose to find a defendant not guilty, even though they believe that the person is technically guilty of the charges. They do this because they disagree with the law or believe that applying the law in a particular case would result in an unjust result. Jurors rely on their conscience, even if it contradicts the law or evidence presented by the prosecution. How did this principle come into being?
One of the earliest cited cases of jury nullification, which established a precedent for future cases, involved the trial of William Penn in London in 1670. Penn was a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) leader who discovered one Sunday that the British government had locked up his meeting house as the Quakers were considered religious dissenters. He was arrested for holding a small and peaceful outdoor religious service in response.
When he arrived in court, he respectfully took off his hat. He was then ordered by a bailiff to put his hat back on, whereupon he was arrested for contempt of court for wearing a hat. When Penn asked the judge which law he had violated by holding his public meeting, the judge only replied, “Common law”. When Penn pointed out he had the right to know the specific charge, the judge placed him in a “bale-dock,” a small room in the back corner of the courtroom.
