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Jury nullification sometimes takes the form of a jury convicting the defendant of lesser charges than the prosecutor sought. [13] In the 21st century, many discussions of jury nullification center around drug laws that many consider unjust either in principle or because they disproportionately affect members of certain groups.
Jury nullification may also occur in civil suits, in which the verdict is generally a finding of liability or lack of liability (rather than a finding of guilty or not guilty). [22] The main ethical issue involved in jury nullification is the tension between democratic self-government and integrity. [23]
Judgment notwithstanding the verdict, also called judgment non obstante veredicto, or JNOV, is a type of judgment as a matter of law that is sometimes rendered at the conclusion of a jury trial. In American state courts , JNOV is the practice whereby the presiding judge in a civil jury trial may overrule the decision of a jury and reverse or ...
Jury nullification means deciding not to apply the law to the facts in a particular case by jury decision. In other words, it is "the process whereby a jury in a criminal case effectively nullifies a law by acquitting a defendant regardless of the weight of evidence against him or her."
Sparf v. United States ended the 100-years old custom of informing the jury of their right to decide both statutory law and facts. Since then, judges do not inform juries of their power to nullify the case statute, although that power is universally acknowledged. Justice Harlan, speaking for the majority, quoted Kane v. Com., 1 Cr. Law Mag. 51, 56:
Some prosecutors and law enforcement professionals are strongly opposed to the notion that juries can nullify undesirable laws. [17] In 2008, Clay Conrad, author of Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, quit the organization, stating that it was "so centered on jury nullification that it was ignoring the numerous threats that exist to the jury as an institution," [18] as evidenced ...
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 ...
The reintroduction of the "not guilty" verdict was part of a wider movement during the 17th and 18th century which saw a gradual increase in the power of juries, [citation needed] such as the trial of William Penn in 1670, in which an English jury first gained the right to pass a verdict contrary to the law (known as jury nullification), and ...