In Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford she tells a story of the 1960s. I can’t remember the details of the political trial – had the defendant’s been accused of . But they were found not guilty, and in the party to celebrate the result a young man stood on a table and shouted out “And the best thing about it is they’re guilty.”
Today the jury took just two hours to find Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane, and Sam Land not guilty of willful damage and burglary.
In April 2008, they went to the Waihopai spy base and destroyed one of the domes. Since then they have been very clear that they did damage the spy base, but they were not guilty of any crime. They had taken the action that they did to avert much greater harm, including the on-going war in Iraq.
For those interested in the exact legal details I recommend Brian Law. But it’s not the legal aspects of this that I’m celebrating. It’s that the Waihopai 3 maintained that they did it, and that they were right to do it, and the jury believed them.
I don’t think that’s actually what happened.
You can’t separate the legality from the result. The jury didn’t say “The accused were right to destroy the dome!”
The jury said “The accused had a reasonable belief that they were right to destroy the dome. Therefore they lacked the requisite intent for the criminal charge.”
Since you occasionally write on rape, I’ll give you an analogy:
Criminal rape requires intent, not lack of consent. So juries often conclude that the accused rapist lacked criminal intent because he had reason to believe that the victim was consenting.
This “lack of intent” can defeat the charge even though it is crystal clear in retrospect that the victim was NOT consenting.
Same here.
The issue was whether the accused were reasonable in their (misinformed) belief that the destruction of the dome was not illegal. If they believed that their actions were OK, then they lacked the requisite intent.
This lack of intent defeated the charge even though it was crystal clear that the destruction was in fact illegal; you can’t destroy government property because you feel like it.
You can see it’s a technicality by asking “can they do it again?”
If it was really “legal,” then they can repeat their actions. But they can’t. They got a pass because they were misinformed, not because they were right. Now that they’re not misinformed, they don’t get the pass any more.
IANAL and sailorman is, but technically can’t a jury find someone guilty or not guilty for any dam reason they please? For example, if the jury said “not guilty” and a poll of the jury afterwards showed that the jury believed the defendent guilty but voted not guilty because they hated the prosecuter to the point that they were willing to let a guilty person go to punish the prosecuter, isn’t that still a legal result? In this case, if the jury is convinced the defendents were in the right to destroy the dome, whatever the technical legality, can’t they say not guilty and leave it?
No. A jury should never convict on extra-legal grounds and defendants in the U.S. can appeal if that happens. It’s a due process violation.
Generally yes, at least in the U.S. The practice is referred to as “jury nullification.” The government cannot appeal when the jury does that. Due process is designed to protect the defendant, not the government.
Yup, pretty much. Ask OJ Simpson how that works.
Perhaps. I don’t know Australian law. But judging from the link that Maia provided, that’s not what happened here.
Some crimes have very little wiggle room for the jury other than straight out revolt in the form of nullification. If there’s not an intent aspect then it is harder to do.
Other crimes have an intent aspect. This one did. That gives the jury more wiggle room. A jury would have to feel REALLY strongly about making a statement to take the more difficult ‘nullification’ tack if they can ethically find the defendant not guilty for other reasons.
A jury should never convict on extra-legal grounds and defendants in the U.S. can appeal if that happens.
Thanks for the correction, I should have seen that one. However, in the case of an acquital the jury’s result stands, even if they’ve clearly not followed the letter of the law?
To give an extreme example, suppose the jury is considering the case of a person who successfully assassinated a (hypothetical) president. The assassination was witnessed by hundreds of people, captured on film, and admitted by the assassin. However, ze said that ze did it because the president was about to start a nuclear war and presents evidence to that effect that is convincing to the jury. They find hir not guilty despite overwhelming evidence including clear intent. Does it stand? (In US law, at least. I realize that the case Maia is discussing is non-US so it’s a bit of a derailment but if both Maia and sailorman are willing to put up with it…)
reminds me of scott roeder’s attempted defense
In 1980, eight members of the Plowshares Movement entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were found guilty on various counts, their claims of necessity notwithstanding.
One of the defendants, Daniel Berrigan, explained [edited to add: during a lecture] the Necessity defense as arising from the idea that, if a fire threatens to sweep through a town, you are legally justified in taking measures to stop it, even if this would entail blowing up private property. After all, the private property was going to be destroyed anyway. Analogously, people should be entitled to destroy private property to protect us from the threat of nuclear destruction … or something.
After Berrigan conceded that he knew his actions could not, by themselves, eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons, I challenged the relevance of the Necessity defense to his actions. I argued that the Necessity defense should only apply if the actions you took had some reasonable likelihood to stopping the anticipated harm. No matter how bad the fire is, you can’t use the Necessity defense to justify blowing up the southernmost house in a town when the fire is sweeping in from the north. No matter how Necessary his desired ends were, unless Berrigan’s chosen means had some reasonably likelihood of achieving those ends, the Necessity defense simply didn’t apply.
Rather, I opined that Berrigan was engaged in plain ol’ civil disobedience – but without the admit-you’re-breaking-the-law-and-accept-the-punishment part. Berrigan didn’t share my characterization of his actions. But moreover, he challenged the idea that there was anything wrong with protesters willfully violating laws and then contesting those laws, just as Rosa Parks had done. A resort to the courts does not make disobedient people any less civil.
I conceded that point. But I noted that Parks was charged with violating policies promoting segregation in public accommodation – policies that are hard to justify, even in the abstract. Berrigan was charged with violating laws against trespass and destruction of private property – policies that are pretty easy to justify, especially in the abstract. Which may explain the difference in the outcome of their respective cases.
(Berrigan also had some theory that things related to the production of nuclear weapons were not “property” because there is nothing “proper” about them; I couldn’t follow that argument.)
In the criminal context (which is where defendants get protections against double jeopardy, etc.) then generally yes. I suspect there may be exceptions for certain types of jury conduct (this isn’t my specialty,) but I am fairly sure that “wrong verdict!” isn’t an exception.
In the civil context, the judge is permitted to overrule the jury if the verdict is patently unreasonable. That isn’t the case in criminal law.
So I’d answer “yes” to your hypothetical, based on what I know. You really should google ‘jury nullification.’ There’s a lot of stuff out there. here’s the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Nobody.really: were you the attorney on that case? That’s fascinating. i’d love to hear more in some other thread.
Whoops! No, no, we just spared during a Q&A session after a lecture. Should have clarified that; now I have.
Sailorman: Thanks! Jury nullification is a fascinating aspect of the jury system. I’m not sure whether to call it a feature or a bug, though.
howard roark’s trial ended the same way too
its a feature when you get the outcome you like, a bug when you don’t.
real liberalism is hyper-concerned with process, not outcomes. after all, freedom of press doesn’t care which books and newspapers sell best, only that all books and newspapers are allowed to sell.
the alternative is to have an authority decide the outcome–say restrict foxnews in favor of npr–and that may indeed have some good effects, like lead to a more educated citizenry; but in the long run its vulnerable to despotism, since this process consolidates power. this is why socialism failed.
no conversation about jury nullification is complete w/o bringing up jim crow. white jurys routinely refused to convict whites of crimes against blacks; which explains why liberal-democrats like jfk and lbj insisted on a trial-by-jury provision in the 1957 civil rights act for those violating court orders meant to enforce civil rights…jfk and lbj knew all white juries would nullify any crime against blacks, thus serving the political needs of the democratic party. (their ticket won the south, needless to say)
i sincerely apologize for constantly playing the race card against progressives and reminding you all of your movements past. history isn’t destiny, to be sure. but, forget history doomed repeat.
process matters.
its a feature when you get the outcome you like, a bug when you don’t.
Cynic :-)
There is an easy way to fix the specific problem you mentioned: the prosecution just needs to make sure that the jury is not all white in such cases. Admittedly they don’t always seem to manage this. Ask Rodney King. Though that case may have been lost when they moved the trial rather than when they picked the jury.
I agree that process matters, but jury notification is part of the process. If it is a broken part, then presumably it needs to be fixed. The question then becomes how. I can’t think of any solutions that aren’t worse than the problem, but maybe a person who is more creative and/or knowledgable about law could comment?
Jury nullification isn’t really part of the American process, so much as it is something that, due to the way the American jury system works, juries can do without anybody really being able to stop them. If a jury acquits, regardless of reason, the defendant is precluded from being retried on double-jeopardy grounds. That’s it, full stop, no matter how egregious the jury action is. But that doesn’t mean we “allow” jury nullification, we’re just procedurally bound from redressing it. A judge who gets word that a juror is planning to nullify is fully justified in, and usually will, dismiss* that juror from the panel prior to the verdict being rendered. See the memo opinion in United States v. Luisi.
* I am the only one who hates conjugating phrases like this. “Justified in . . . dismissing” versus “will dismiss”. It drives me crazy. What’s the rule? Or do I just have to avoid mismatched tenses?