Skip to main content

Here's the test case for jury nullificiation

If you can read this story about an 18 year old Florida girl facing years of jail time and a future as registered sex offender and NOT think that jury nullification is a good idea, then you probably shouldn't click this link, either:

Fully Informed Jury Association.

Comments

The Last Ephor said…
Do you know if there is any constraint on jury nullification in DE? I understand in some jurisdictions the judge will either issue instructions against it or, in some cases, set aside verdicts that are nullifications.
Josh Phipps said…
I have a case coming up soon where a statist politician got mad that I threatened to post his criminal record on a telephone pole.
While it may be against the law I am holing out hope that the jury will nullify it since its a ludicrous crime
tom said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
tom said…
The only references to juries in the Delaware Constitution are the rather cryptic statements that "Trial by jury shall remain as heretofore" [Art 1, Sec 4], and "... and in all indictments for libels the jury may determine the facts and the law, as in other cases." [Art 1, Sec 5, emphasis mine].

I'll spare you the lengthy legal analysis, and just say that it means our Jury Rights derive from English Common Law, and that Nullification is absolutely valid in all cases.

Most DE judges OTOH seem to think this should be kept a deep dark secret and threaten the defense w/ contempt if they mention it.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?