While it's true that this little piece got me thinking about jury nullification, and nullification in general, it's a bit more interesting to consider that other alternative that is making some mockery out of the jury system. It seems to me that one's right to a fair and speedy trial is being abridged by the fact that so many people don't really care enough to serve on a jury, and those that survive voir dire are essentially tools of the trying attorneys.
Radley Balko has an interesting piece on jury nullification in drug cases. I'm torn. On the one hand, you have to obey the law even if it's a bad law--unless it actually requires you to do something monumentally unjust. On the other hand, laws preventing people from deciding what they can do with their own bodies are pretty monumentally unjust, and they have massively increased the incarceration rates, and subsequent unemployability, of poor black men--so how could I follow the law and help perpetuate that injustice?
Ahh the poor black man. He's a drug abuser and he abuses himself. There's really no crime in that is there? Ahh but when Becky abuses herself with drugs it's a great tragedy, no?
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