Around here, people are clamoring for a judge to be recalled because she is on top of rights for defendants. A recent one I watched on Zoom was a prosecution motion to revoke bail:
Prosecutor: "Because blah blah blah, and in addition the defendant shows no signs of taking responsibility for his actions, we..."
Judge, cutting her off: "I'm going to stop you there. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty, and as of this moment has not been found guilty at trial. In the eyes of the court, he has precisely zero obligation to take responsibility for alleged actions at this point in time."
Prosecutor was not happy.
If jury nullification is not a possible outcome, then either the defendant doesn't have a right to trial by jury, or that jury is not allowed to make an independent decision.
Defendants don't have a direct constitutional right to jury nullification (the Constitution doesn't say anything about nullification). It's just a logical consequence: if the jury really can make independent decisions, then nullification is necessarily one of those possible decisions.
Legally it can mean a case where a man met a women in a bar, she was not drunk and wanted to go home with him. She explicitly consented. Later it ends up that she was using a fake ID to get into the bar, she was only 17.9 years old in a state where the age of consent is 18. Or alternatively, the guy recently moved a block over. In his old location the age of consent was less than 18, but now he moved and he committed rape (aka, the opinion that got Richard Stallman to step down).
And no, there is no exception for mistaking the age. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
If there's no force/threats/drugs etc involved and the minor consents, it's charged as statutory rape which is different than capital-R rape.
Statutory rape can be a felony, but in cases like an 18 year old and a 17.5 year old having sex it's a misdemeanor and realistically 99.999% of the time it happens there are no charges
Nullification in not so many words.
Yeah, I know you're busy and easily bored.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/inner-lond...
You're literally describing jury nullification in a situation where by the hypothetical judge's instructions they're obviously guilty. I might agree with you that the law is bullshit but by right you and I should be dismissed.
This is the entire reason that we have trial by jury and not trial by judge. I'm not sure how this got lost over the centuries. If 12 of your peers think you did it but the law is bullshit and you shouldn't have your life destroyed because of some stupid technicality in a bullshit law, then you should walk free! I'm aware this has been used to horrible ends in the past (e.g. 12 white jurors nullifying a lynching) but that's a problem with jury selection (and those so-called peers), not with nullification.
> You're literally describing jury nullification in a situation where by the hypothetical judge's instructions they're obviously guilty
Yes, that is the only time nullification is relevant. If a judge can lead the jury to one verdict or another via his instructions, then it's not a trial by jury at all. It's a trial by judge. The founders understood that -- they didn't want a trial by judge. The jury is a check on the judge's power!
