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There is some question as to whether jury nullification should be disallowed in cases where there is an identifiable crime victim. [58] Jury nullification has more support among legal academics than judges. [59] Jury nullification has also been criticized for having resulted in the acquittal of whites who victimized blacks in the Deep South.
Jury nullification became so common that many British prosecutors gave up trying maritime cases since conviction seemed hopeless. [56] Before the American Civil War , juries sometimes refused to convict for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act .
We must therefore accept that the jury are no more judges of law in criminal than in civil cases, with the qualification that, owing to the peculiar doctrine of autrefois acquit, a criminal acquittal by a jury cannot be overhauled by the court.’" Sparf remains the last direct opinion of the Court on jury nullification.
Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a not guilty verdict even though jurors believe beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant has broken the law. This may happen when jurors disagree ...
Make no mistake, jury nullification, like it or not, is as American as apple pie: Courts recognize that jurors surely have the power to nullify, even if not the right.
United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606 (2nd Cir. 1997), [1] was a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that a juror could not be removed from a jury on the ground that the juror was acting in purposeful disregard of the court's instructions on the law, when the record evidence raises a possibility that the juror was simply unpersuaded by the Government's case ...
Others, like CNN legal commentator Elie Honig, said that the case carries the “highest risk” of jury nullification precisely due to the popularity of the 26-year-old.
Allen v. United States, 164 U.S. 492 (1896), was a United States Supreme Court case that, among other things, approved the use of a jury instruction intended to prevent a hung jury by encouraging jurors in the minority to reconsider. The Court affirmed Alexander Allen's murder conviction, having vacated his two prior convictions for the same ...