this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Luigi Mangione
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People need to show up outside the courthouse and educate anyone who enters about jury nullification
Knowing about jury nullification is grounds to get you off the jury. Juries are already instructed they have that choice (in different words)
It's enough to get you excluded from the jury, but if you are already chosen you deserve to be told explicitly: you can nullify this prosecution if you think it is wrongful
This is jury tampering. As long as violence is not involved, it is only a misdemeanor punishable by a $1000 fine in my state
Ew, I totally would never crowdfund for that kind of behavior. We should share it around if anything so depraved were ever to surface so we never accidentally support doing such things. Despicable.
Every legal mind has been very clear that jurors should not be told about it; people who know about nullification explicitly rely more on their feelings than evidence and are more easily fooled by sympathetic defendants and vice versa. Nullification works both ways, you could convinct without reasonable doubt or evidence, which is also not black and white.
Nullification exists simply because jurors can't be prosecuted for getting it wrong, so they can do whatever they want. But if you join intending to nullify, you technically commited purgery when you swore to "uphold the law". It's a very grey area because we technically want jurors to make informed and fair decisions, not selfish ones. Courts have been clear it shouldn't be explicitly mentioned, but they also haven't banned it because they believe in the idea of everyone coming to the conclusion the law doesn't apply/he isn't guilty of the crime despite clearly doing the thing, rather than declaring him "guilty without punishment". It would be difficult to ban or make a law against this too. They're just saying the law doesn't apply in this case which is reasonable.
Of course in the case of luigi I would totally agree with them letting him walk, but nullification is a fragile thing, especially for those who need to be told directly they have that power. Plus, luigi will at best get a reduced sentence like in crimes of "passion" or for being in a crisis, he likely isn't going to walk.
Edit: I think we can get banned for discussing this, i don't know anymore.
It's not perjury because nullification is part of the laws you're upholding.
Nullification is not a law. It's a hole in the law of 2 other laws
Some subtleties there...what is the "wrong" choice?
If it's "the verdict doesn't match what the defendant did" - well, we don't always know for sure. If it's "the verdict isn't what I would have said" - hey, everybody likes to armchair quarterback. It's still up to the jury, though.
There's no subtlety. If it was later found out he was actually guilty but the jurors cut him loose, he cant be tried again and the jurors can't get in trouble for not finding him guilty when he was (and they would have found him guilty had they known). They couldn't have known, it's just common sense to not prosecute them.
There's also no armchair quarterback, thats not what that means. In none of my comments am i specifying what I would have done in either persons position from my armchair. I'm just stating facts about the law. (Not giving advice either).
Theres subtlety in jury nullification, but not in the jurors immunity. It comes from multiple laws and has precedence.
CEOs get off because of holes in the law all the time. The holes/loopholes/technicalities are part of it.
I didn't say it wasn't part of it, i said it wasn't a law sworn to uphold
Do you agree that jury nullification is a part of the law? Why would they only uphold specific laws and not all of it? I might be misunderstanding you.
It's "part of the law" we say a hole because it sits between 2 actually written laws. Jury nullification is not arcticle 5.x.2.y of Z legislation.
The law says if you shoot someone else while not in imminent danger for life (self-defense), you break that written law (and no other supercedes it). The jurors can find that while he killed someone and wasn't in immediate danger, this law doesn't apply to him because . That's jury nullification, they nullified the law for reasons not already exempt in the law while agreeing he did the thing we normally call murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
You can swear to uphold the law and nullify it, thats why jury nullification works and why they aren't found to have purgured themselves. But if you try to nullify the law, knowing he is guilty by the rules of the law for other motives, that's not upholding the law and could be a crime. Luigi would have to be found not guilty because "murder" is not what he did (which is totally plausible and needs to be argued)
As we are always sure to err, we should err in the direction of mercy.
Interesting points. I would argue that it can't be perjury if you swore your oath before you knew about nullification.
Simple. If ever questioned after by a judge:
"When asked if I knew about jury nullification, you must understand. I personally believe the only way to know something is to experience it firsthand. And so before, I did not know about jury nullification. Now, NOW your honor. NOW I know about jury nullification."
I agree!
Telling others to not uphold the law can probably get you in trouble too so it would be hard to convince others. It could work (both ways) if everyone is told after the oath, and they all individually decide to do it.
Breaking news: courts unable to find jurors for Mangione case after citizens informed how the law works
Sounds like a plan.