[judge2020]

> When the deck is completely stacked against you, going outside the rules is not "illegal".

Yes it is. Things are "illegal" when they're in the law book, regardless of which law they're breaking and what they're standing up for.

[frenchy]

In most places, and certainly in places that practice "common law" and democracy, part of what makes something legal is its moral acceptability. The laws on the books exist to reflect that and to make things function efficiently and fairly. Without that, laws are simply a tool of violence and oppression by the authorities (or the majority, in case of a democracy) against their population.

That's why we have juries of peers, and the ability of a jury to say "this person did the thing, but they shouldn't be punished for it".

[salawat]

Hence why jury nullification scares the ever loving crap out of the Justice system. Binding precedent is created by the Jury, which throws a wrench into the works that for some reason is seen less acceptable or "official" than a prosecutor exercising prosecutorial discretion.

[gpm]

Jury nullification does not create binding precedent.

[salawat]

That only makes things even more hilarious, because now the Justice system can't even claim to be consistently applying stare decisis across the board if that is the case.

Rather it only does it when someone makes the decision that to do so is convenient for maintaining the integrity of the Judicial system; thereby creating the facade that the entire thing isn't rife with capricious singularities like it actually is.

When laws are impossible to consistently enforce (as evidenced by prosecutorial discretion), or juries are not on board with seeing them enforced, it should be a much more blatant signal something is up or off than it is.

In fact, is there even a record of cases of "refused prosecutions"? If not, maybe there should be. Then there's be an objective metric to analyze to see if a law is being abused selectively.

[Y_Y]

Cases are recorded in general. I don't know if there's a BigQuery LexisNexis or whatever, but I bet someone has access to a representative database and can grep for "we the jury declare the defendant not guilty" followed by "the judge was foiled and slunk back to its lair to concoct a new scheme".

[hypeless]

Care to elaborate?

[gpm]

Not a ton to elaborate on, it just isn't precedent.

All jury nullification is is a jury finding someone not guilty despite the fact that they think they did actually commit all the elements of the offense. It doesn't prevent the law from being applied in future trials, even in identical situations (nor do other jury verdicts). It's not even typically known whether or not the jury found not guilty because of nullification or because they didn't find the prosecutions case convincing.

[yardie]

In quite a few US states anti-miscegenation laws are still on the books. You would hardly find a lawyer or judge to take the case but most haven't been removed, yet. If you told a interracial couple that what they are doing is "illegal" you'd rightly be laughed at.

[spoonjim]

Still on the books is different from still having force of law. Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia voids all miscegenation statutes whether they are repealed or not.

[CheezeIt]

That’s because there’s case law.

[autoliteInline]

>Things are "illegal" when they're in the law book,

Probably oughtta get the Kazakhstani Disney police right on it.