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Originally Posted by mookiemookie
How did the law fail?
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In 2010 he was convicted of a felony. Any idea what the original charges were and what his conviction was for? I will give you a hint - it had to do with operating a motor vehicle.....
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Everyone, even those we know are guilty, is entitled to due process. Vigilantism undermines one of the core tenets of our justice system - the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. Citizens don't have the right to be judge, jury and executioner. That's anarchy.
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I don't say that citizens do have that right. We are not talking about joe blow citizen though are we - we are talking about one of the victims of the crime....
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Technically, jury nullification would never play into it. Jury nullification is a way of expressing disagreement with a law by refusing to convict someone guilty of breaking said law on the grounds that it should never have been put on the books in the first place. I really doubt anyone is going to say that the law against murder is a bad one.
Refusing to convict someone ≠ jury nullification.
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Thankfully - not every case is decided purely on the "technicals". A jury can choose to acquit using the rationale that while the law itself is good - it is being misapplied or applied in error. That also is jury nullification.
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Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a verdict of "Not Guilty" despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation charged. The jury in effect nullifies a law that it believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant whose fate they are charged with deciding.
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(emphasis in Bold added)
Source: Doug Linder, School of Law - University of Michigan - Kansas City
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/project...ification.html