Extinction Rebellion: Jury acquits protesters despite judge's direction

a1ex2001 said:
She was one of twelve if the other 11 thought the defendant was innocent he would have walked. Being judged by a jury of your peers is vastly preferable to being judged by precise interpretation of badly formed laws by an overly academic judiciary.

Yes this verdict is odd but it stands out because it is odd very very few jury trials result in verdicts that are out of the ordinary and a few protesters being let off for some minor criminal damage is a price worth paying for having one of if not the best judicial system in the world. Independent of politics interference and giving everyone an opportunity to be judged by a panel of real world people.
Click to expand...

Well should you ever end up in court you go ahead and have your jury, personally I would far prefer to be up in front of a Magistrate. I have seen the way Magistrates operate and in my opinion they are far more likely to correctly interpret the law than a bunch of people off the street, who pretty much arrive at random conclusions.
 
It seems that we are encouraging them for another attack on our lifestyle, work etc. Just as we get out from under with covid we get a load of shiftless no hopers blocking our carriageways and defacing our buildings. At least this time they should be home grown shiftless no hopers with flying being so awkward. Emma Thompson, at you.
 
VincentHanna said:
Well exactly.

In America they gave a pool of jurors and the defence and prosecution Use jury screening to whittle it down to ones they think they can convince.

Ludicrous compared to our system
Click to expand...

I emailed an American couple who are my good friends about this thread, he has his own small but successful law firm in Queens NYC, while she works for the Brooklyn D.A.
I said that mildly differing opinions had been expressed about the U.S. screening of jurors, would they care to comment?
The female half sent back, tongue in cheek I hope, “Okay, O wise Limey, where are we poor colonials going wrong, while you guys have it so right?”
I said that I wasn’t educated in law enough to pronounce who was right, or who was wrong, but on the only occasion that I served on a jury, I was in a room with 20-25 others, and my name was called, and the clerk seated me in a courtroom.
The defendant was a black guy, accused of stealing books, and threatening security with a hypodermic needle.
His lawyer didn’t ask me if I was now, or had I ever been a member of the KKK, and prosecuting counsel didn’t ask me if I sympathised with the NAACP.
It was sit down, shut up, listen to the evidence, make a decision, and then head for a decent bar.
She replied, “I have no answer to that, other than it sounds like you guys have it right.”
 
gailjon said:
Will this set a precedent for subsequent acts of violence perpetrated by protesters in the future?
Click to expand...

Not officially, no. Not in the legal context of the word "precedent". Jury nullification is specific to that jury on that case. It doesn't set a legal precedent. The only sense in which it might set a precedent is that being aware of it might cause other jurors in other cases to act the same way.

Can future rioters get away with citing this verdict to prevent their convictions?
Click to expand...

Not as a legal argument at trial, no. Probably on (anti)social media.

It seems strange to me that someone can break the law and have no repercussions because the jury thought they were 'morally' right. I always though morality had no place in the law courts. If I decide to assault someone who assaulted me or a family member I would assume that I would be convicted of assault, no matter what my motive was.
Click to expand...

The law is and always been at least partly about morality. The other part is the stability of the state, but morality has always been part of it. Motive should IMO always be considered too, in sentencing at least.

In early medieval England the type of vengeance you refer to was legal. The reality of it hasn't changed, but the law regarding it has. How much it was changed due to morality and how much due to the stability of the state I don't know. It could be either or a mixture of both. Certainly Alfred the Great was opposed to it - his laws go into some detail against it, trying to replace it with weregild (compensation, essentially) - but I don't know why and I don't know if the reason is known. Either could apply. Blood feuding tends to drag on long after everyone involved in the original incident has died. Sometimes long after everyone has forgotten what the original cause was. It becomes "my family and your family are enemies". Yeah, because 500 years ago one of my ancestors accused one of your ancestors of stealing one of their cows. But that was forgotten 400 years ago.
 
Angilion said:
Not officially, no. Not in the legal context of the word "precedent". Jury nullification is specific to that jury on that case. It doesn't set a legal precedent. The only sense in which it might set a precedent is that being aware of it might cause other jurors in other cases to act the same way.



Not as a legal argument at trial, no. Probably on (anti)social media.



The law is and always been at least partly about morality. The other part is the stability of the state, but morality has always been part of it. Motive should IMO always be considered too, in sentencing at least.

In early medieval England the type of vengeance you refer to was legal. The reality of it hasn't changed, but the law regarding it has. How much it was changed due to morality and how much due to the stability of the state I don't know. It could be either or a mixture of both. Certainly Alfred the Great was opposed to it - his laws go into some detail against it, trying to replace it with weregild (compensation, essentially) - but I don't know why and I don't know if the reason is known. Either could apply. Blood feuding tends to drag on long after everyone involved in the original incident has died. Sometimes long after everyone has forgotten what the original cause was. It becomes "my family and your family are enemies". Yeah, because 500 years ago one of my ancestors accused one of your ancestors of stealing one of their cows. But that was forgotten 400 years ago.
Click to expand...

Thank you for that info. Very interesting. It makes me feel a little better that we won't end up with every act of violence in future protests being dismissed as morally acceptable and therefore not punishable.
 
Angilion said:
Blood feuding tends to drag on long after everyone involved in the original incident has died. Sometimes long after everyone has forgotten what the original cause was. It becomes "my family and your family are enemies". Yeah, because 500 years ago one of my ancestors accused one of your ancestors of stealing one of their cows. But that was forgotten 400 years ago.
Click to expand...

The "Kanun" is an Albanian set of rules that govern vengeance and blood feuds. It led to feuds that lasted hundreds of years and depopulation of entire villages.

It was extremely precise about how a feud was conducted, and the rules that had to be followed by all parties. From memory, you have to notify the target's family and the target has 7 days to get his affairs in order, before he can be killed.

Broken April is a novel by Ismael Kadare that explains to process and implications of such a feud. It's a bleak read...
 
Werewolf said:
It's one of the most powerful and best things a Jury can and are allowed to do, and from memory something that has in the past passed quite serious messages along to the government of the day about the public's opinion of certain laws or the way the system deals with things.
From memory part of the reason it tends not to happen often is that the prosecution tends to try and stop people who are aware of this ability from being chosen for the jury.

A couple of hundred years ago there was a case where from memory a jury was imprisoned because they refused to pass the sentence the judge wanted, and continued to refuse to do so which is the basis of it.

Whenever I see someone post like the op about how a jury doing something and claiming the jury has undermined their confidence by say finding someone guilty/not guilty I always tend to wonder who that person would think if the Jury had done the same thing but in a way they agreed with.
Click to expand...

That may be the case but that doesn't necessarily make a decision the right one, look at the OJ Simpson trial to see just how wrong juries can be when they have a vested interest or are just plain prejudiced/biassed for/against the accused
 
pp111 said:
The jury system is hopelessly flawed. The simple truth is that average juror doesn't understand the law, and is horribly biased...or completely nuts. I was on a jury once and there was one elderly woman who was absolutely adamant that the defendant was guilty because his eyes were to close together. I really am not joking, she gave that as the principle reason she felt he was guilty and she would not back down.

Juries should be abandoned in favour of a system similar to the Magistrates.
Click to expand...

Absolutely not, we would have judges acting as puppets of our tyrannical state enforcing any draconian law, a jury is a safeguard against unjust laws.

Angilion said:
The law is and always been at least partly about morality. The other part is the stability of the state, but morality has always been part of it. Motive should IMO always be considered too, in sentencing at least.

In early medieval England the type of vengeance you refer to was legal. The reality of it hasn't changed, but the law regarding it has. How much it was changed due to morality and how much due to the stability of the state I don't know. It could be either or a mixture of both. Certainly Alfred the Great was opposed to it - his laws go into some detail against it, trying to replace it with weregild (compensation, essentially) - but I don't know why and I don't know if the reason is known. Either could apply. Blood feuding tends to drag on long after everyone involved in the original incident has died. Sometimes long after everyone has forgotten what the original cause was. It becomes "my family and your family are enemies". Yeah, because 500 years ago one of my ancestors accused one of your ancestors of stealing one of their cows. But that was forgotten 400 years ago.
Click to expand...

Spot on.

The people in power have always imposed their moral opinions onto the masses, e.g. drug prohibition, laws against prostitution, homosexuality, pornography etc.
 
Energize said:
Absolutely not, we would have judges acting as puppets of our tyrannical state enforcing any draconian law, a jury is a safeguard against unjust laws.
Click to expand...

Honestly that is the most silly thing I think I have ever hear anyone say. A jury is not supposed and never should be deciding what laws are fair and what are not. That's not it's purpose at all.
 
With regard to the OP did it say if it was a unanimous not guilty or not guilty by virtue of not being able to reach a unanimous guilty? It’s not hard to imagine one or two eco lefty headbangers preventing the result direct by the judge. I’m kind of surprised if it’s the whole jury.
 
PlacidCasual said:
With regard to the OP did it say if it was a unanimous not guilty or not guilty by virtue of not being able to reach a unanimous guilty? It’s not hard to imagine one or two eco lefty headbangers preventing the result direct by the judge. I’m kind of surprised if it’s the whole jury.
Click to expand...

The jury are directed to reach a unanimous verdict. If they fail to reach a unanimous verdict the judge may give directions that a majority verdict will be acceptable, but still no less than 10 to two. If a jury can't agree on a verdict, either unanimously or by majority, the whole jury will be discharged and there would usually be a retrial.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom