If Clarence Page was attempting in his Nov. 15 Op-Ed column to enlighten his readers on the meaning of jury nullification (when a jury acquits a defendant it believes to be guilty), he used some terrible examples to prove his point.
When he writes “Jury nullification got a terrible name when all-white Southern juries refused to convict the known white killers of blacks,” he is not presenting a valid example of jury nullification. That is an example of justice being denied by a group of white bigots.
A good example of jury nullification occurred recently in California. A man was charged with stealing an automobile. If convicted, he would have faced a penalty of 25 years to life in prison because this would have been his third conviction, and the law mandated such a penalty for a three-time loser. The jury knew he was guilty but believed that the penalty was far too excessive for that particular crime. They found the defendant not guilty.
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