Re: Jury outcomes and selection [was: Nonproblems with Juries]

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Feb 06 2000 - 22:02:02 MST


On Sunday, February 06, 2000 1:27 PM Robert J. Bradbury
bradbury@aeiveos.wa.com wrote:
> radical era). In some of the literature, I read about this, it was argued
> that there was a legal basis for a jury providing a 3rd trial outcome
> (other than finding the defendent guilty or non-guilty). They could in
fact
> find the law "invalid". Durk and Sandy argued that this would be the
> best way to get law under which the FDA was attempting to control
> supplement distribution and product "claims" thrown out.
>
> Does anyone know whether or not this is the case and whether this
> defense has ever been tried for the people to "take back the government"?

This is known as jury nullification and has its basis in common law going
back, I believe, to the late 1600s. Even though it seems in line with
American law, judges usually treat any call for jury nullification as jury
tampering. FIJA is an organization dedicated to making sure people are
aware of jury nullification. Its web site is at http://www.fija.org/

> Now, that question being asked, then one gets back to my original
> question regarding "peers". I would consider "peers" to be either
> agnostics or athiests. When defense selects juries, can they
> only select people that fall into those categories since they
> are presumably the only people capable of coming to rational
> conclusions based on the evidence presented.

I know many atheists and so called agnostics who are irrational.

Daniel Ust
    Find out how tar water makes irrational atheists and agnostics into
irrational theists in one serving and back again in two at:
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:30 MDT