Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
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- #121
There is a pervasive myth that three states supposedly allow jury nullification instructions: Georgia, Maryland, and Indiana. See State v. Morgan Stanley & Co., 194 W.V. 163, 175, 459 S.E.2d 906, 918 n.27 (W.V. 1995); Paul Butler, Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System, 105 Yale L.J. 677, 704 n.147 (1995). Some lists also include Oregon. This is presumably because those states have laws or constitutional provisions suggesting that criminal jurors are judges of the law and the facts. But the myth is false. Despite their differing constitutions, all four states have held that a jury has, at most, the power to acquit a guilty man, not the right, and should not be told that it may ignore or nullify the law.See, e.g., Miller v. Georgia, 260 Ga. 191, 196, 391 S.E.2d 642, 647 (Ga. 1990).
(I did not write this. I did a little Googling and came across this statement in a post on a thread on some obscure legal discussion board somewhere. Nonetheless, whoever wrote this knows what he/she is talking about - it is a totally correct statement.)
This is where legal analysis confuses me. How can I have the power yet not have the right to do something that is perfectly legal? Or is this expert also going to try and claim that if a jury nullifies the state has a right to throw the verdict out.
Double jeopardy is what keeps the power, and the right, to nullify in the hands of the jury.