You do not have to find a person Guilty just because the Judge directs you to. Whether the person is bang to rights ‘according to the law’ or not.
This is your right, if you feel the law is being an ass, the prosecution is malicious and petty or just what a sane person would consider unfair.
It is not illegal, you can acquit, you can find Not Guilty
And you know what the Judge, the Prosecution and the Police can do about it?.
NOTHING
They cannot make you explain yourselves, they cannot send you to jail, they cannot fine you, they cannot ignore your verdict.
You are the final arbiter in the case that is before you.
They can do NOTHING
This is called a Perverse Verdict or Jury Nullification it has a long and noble history.
It is mentioned in whispers, if at all around law courts because the powers that be hate it, They do not want you to know you have this right. The Judge will not even mention that you have this option.
Why do you think they want to do away with Jury trials and impose more and more ‘On The Spot Fines’ without recourse to the justice system.
Imagine if juries decided not to convict people for all the petty crimes they’ve invented
Imagine if people were found Not Guilty of ‘Not sorting their rubbish’ even though they didn’t, why “mere anarchy would be loosed on the world’
Except I don’t think it would, it might actually get a little saner.
I can only hope that the “Twelve Good Men / Women and True” in this case can rest easy in their beds tonight knowing that justice was done, because I know I won’t.
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h/t Dick Puddlecoat for drawing my attention to this
If I can correctly recall a throw-away comment by one of the judges during my most recent spell of jury service, once the jury has heard the prosecution evidence in full, you can in principle acquit at that point without hearing the defence evidence. In fact I suspect a jury is entitled to acquit more-or-less at any stage of the trial.
ReplyDeleteThe judge's observation probably arose because the prosecution case had just imploded and CPS had instructed them to offer no evidence, and the judge was directing an innocent verdict. The ritual that followed was interesting, in that one of the jurors was immediately nominated foreman and invited to formally deliver the verdict. It was a powerful symbolic reminder of the principle that it is the jury alone which decides guilt or innocence.
There was a rather satisfactory outcome later in that week. Obviously I can't get anywhere near to identifying the case for fear (quite rightly) of falling foul of the Contempt of Court Act, but let's just say that the police, the prosecution (who fell asleep during the trial) and the bench were 100% confident the defendant was, to coin a phrase, banged to rights.
Unhelpfully, we concluded that the charge didn't really stand up and the actual offence being prosecuted was being Black in a public place while in charge of a flash-looking motor to the irritation of a police officer. The look on the judge's face when the verdict was delivered was priceless.
Sounds pretty much like my experience of jury service.
ReplyDeleteMost were cut and dried.
But one was definitley stitch up the black guy because he stood up to us when what we were doing was plainly wrong. what can we get him on?
On this occasion neither Judge or Prosecution seemed suprised at the Not Guilty verdict