[ejames]

It's worth remembering that jury nullification is a two-way street.

Nullification is most famous for its history in racially-charged trials in the American South. Southern jurors would refuse to enforce criminal laws if the accused was white and the victim black. Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War.

That's one of the justifications for the power to dismiss jurors - for the sake of justice, law must also have the power to protect minorities who are very unpopular, even, and indeed especially, if the unpopularity is so severe that very few randomly selected people would agree to enforce a law on the minority's behalf.

The problem, of course, is that just because there is no guarantee that nullifiers are right, it does not follow that they are wrong either. However, because jury nullification has its greatest historical significance in the United States when it was used to persecute blacks, legal doctrines which support jury nullification are, by association, not very popular, while legal tactics which allow prosecutors to make their case in the face of potential jury nullification are considered acceptable.

[wnoise]

> Nullified jury cases were one of the tensions that led to the American Civil War.

Sure, but in that case it was Juries refusing to enforce the (truly odious) Fugitive Slave Acts.