Jury nullification

Jackson locates the concept as far back as the 13th century, with the Magna Carta, in England. However, in the US it is often linked initially to the not-guilty verdict of John Peter Zenger, a printer who published anonymous criticisms of a rapacious royal official in New York in 1735 and who was put in jail for sedition and libel when he refused to name the article authors. The judge told the jury only to decide whether Zenger was guilty of publishing the articles, not whether they were true. However, Zenger's lawyer argued that the truth issue was paramount and urged the jury to vote not guilty in order to protect truth. The jury agreed, thus nullifying the obvious fact that Zenger had indeed published the articles (Gard, 1999).

Subsequently, jury nullification was a concept used to argue for justice against tyranny. Jury nullification appeared in the years before the Civil War, when northern ju

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ety to see effective public policy made by accountable bodies and to our ability to know what the law is" (1997, p. 2593). Whether one would ever nullify a guilty verdict comes down to whether one juror would ever find the law demanding a guilty verdict would be so repugnant as to violate conscience. Laws of an unjust state that criminalize a class of people, such as laws upholding slavery or discrimination, would be an example of laws that should be subject to jury nullification. That is because challenging those laws would prevent the state from acting in an anarchic manner and would reclaim the benefits of democracy. 2. As little as 10 years ago there were not by any means adequate mechanisms for detecting wrongful convictions in the USA. That is because 10 years ago the science of DNA, which can eliminate wrongfully accused suspects from prosecution, was just beginning to get organized. It has been pointed out that "DNA evidence has been especially productive of success in overturning wrongful convictions based on junk science, false testimony, and mistaken identity" (Roberts, 2003, p. 567). However, Roberts also says that prosecutorial misconduct is a rampant problem ant that it overwhelms the ability to root out wrongful c
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Approximate Word count = 1232
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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