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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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Jury Nullification is like the secret code of the US justice system.That's why most of the people that work for the system absolutely despised the whole idea.
The us justice system is already fucked up and makes a joke of the term justice.
I mean, if it wasn't packaged up in the American flag and pax americana, your nations actions would be that of clearly terrorist nation.
I don't expect the taliban to have a working legal/justice system either.
This is really true. Pick a blog, video, or what ever lawyer you want making comment on the state of the federal justice system right now. It's a mess and a shit show.
The 5-4 and Strict Scrutiny podcasts are fucking infuriating to listen to. The hypocrisy and self contradiction in Supreme Court and some circuit court decisions is insane.
It has been for a long time
It is so much worse now. Look at the former career employees that abandoned ship. Or the current head prosecutor.
It is so much worse.
Though this happened with the grand jury, which only needs a majority vote (sometimes a supermajority). It means a lot of people chose to nullify or didn't trust the prosecution to give a fair trial.
Any justice system actually. Common law especially though.
Common Law is better than codified law. That's the only reason we have juries and don't just let judges decide the fate of the accused. Can you imagine, in this country, judges the sole decider of your case?
The reason that the UK and US have had such cuntish law enforcement is not because of english common law. It should be noted the UK cancelled some of common law's basic tenants, like the right to a jury trial, not only afforded to indictable offenses, any crime with less than 3 years imprisonment is decided by their famously haughty aristocratic judges now.
They actually passed that??
Yeah, first the Tories maybe 5-7 years back or so cancelled juries for crimes with less than 1 year imprisonment, then Starmer's labour party just upped it to all crimes less than 3 years.
In the late 19th century they also passed a law where if they thought jury tampering was going to happen they could just do it with a judge, idk how often they have used it though.
Pretty sure it's not active yet though, still being discussed?
I was trying to verify where this was, the guardian and reuters in like 2024 or so left me with the impression it was passed, but a cursory search after your inquiry did not find the detail. I had to leave town here, Hopefully I can find out tomorrow morning.
It sounded like they made the new rule but it's not in force yet from my cursory search that led me to some lackluster guardian article.
Quick edit, the news did say it was passed I am sure. I have been wrong before though on stuff like this.
Jury vs judge trial is a separate axis from common law vs civil law. You can have common law (where decisions of higher courts are deemed binding on lower courts) even if lower courts are all judge-only trials. You can have trials decided by a jury where every decision made by a judge is ultimately answerable only to written statute, with prior judicial judgments being at best persuasive.
It can cut both ways though, it was used in the South in favor of racists.
I'll keep that in mind next time we have some influence over policy.
I'm sure the GOP will figure out how to get rid of it soon enough
They would have to get rid of juries altogether.
Given that our current legal system was created as a direct reaction to star chambers and baked into the constitution, they have an uphill climb, at the least.
They don't care about the constitution man.
Trump will do an executive order, it'll get tonthe Supreme.Cpurt, and they will just kneelnon it for "time to think about it." And that will be it, its "the law" now.
Why do people keep pretending the Supreme Court always agrees with Trump. They've struck him down often and seem to be taking a very strict constitutionalist view. Most recent example would be the whole birthright citizenship ruling.
Obviously this court is terrible for many reasons, they gutted the voting rights act and ended Roe. But they're not getting rid of juries their record is clear there
The Supreme Court isn't going to curb its own power for Trump. Even with three of them permanently hanging off his dick, they've shut down literally everything he's done that could affect them personally.
they will give him a secret trial, or disappear to one of thier concentration camps in the south, which would mostly be texas, and the msms will never ever report on a citizen getting detained, at least not a white one.
No, they will do what they do everywhere else and stack the decks so that nullification is only ever used for "their people".
In a sense, its the system functioning as it should. If you have a healthy democratic society with good principals, juries should acquit people for things that may be crimes but are perfectly reasonable and justified.
Why should law enfocement and prosecuters get to decide which laws to enforce and which not to, but jurrors cant?
Unless the laws on the books were short and perfect, there is always going to be enforcement choices, and it seems to me the jury nulification option is no worse than other selective enforcement. It lets guilty people go free, sure, but it sometimes stops unjust incarceration.
It's a great mechanism for "peer review" especially in the sense that ethics and legality are often entirely different things.
What is Jury Nullification?
Basically a jury can legally decide to nullify by declaring "not guilty" regardless of the facts or the judge's instructions, etc. This is why even mentioning jury nullification during a trial can really upset the judge and the prosecution. It is supposed to be something every jury is aware of, but that is usually not actually the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification