Jury Nullification

This week in the law school life of XX, we watched a film called "Inside the Jury Room," in which a crew filmed the deliberations of 12 jurors in a criminal case involving a mentally challenged black man. The crime was possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. The defendant clearly met all 3 prongs of the legal test on point: (1) he was a convicted felon; (2) he had a gun; (3) he knew he had a gun. (NOTE: Ignorance of the law is no defense.)

The jury on screen ended up with a not guilty verdict. The professor polled the class afterwards on our views. I fell strictly in the formalist camp - for me, the jury inquiry should have ended the second they decided that the 3 prongs had been met. But for many others in my class - as with the jury on screen - the role of the jury was more than mere application of the law to a set of facts. Some saw the jury's role as doling out mercy, or adding flexibility to the law, or acting as society's conscience.

So the formalist in me was utterly flabbergasted when the professor revealed that jury nullification - when a jury finds a criminal defendant not guilty despite their belief that there is no reasonable doubt that a violation of a criminal statute has occurred - is generally acceptable in the criminal context (though less so in civil cases). Judges and attorneys don't tell juries that they have this prerogative, but they don't reverse juries or declare mistrials when juries engage in such behavior.

Pros?

Historically, the colonists valued jury nullification as a tool of resistance against the tyranny of British laws. The Framers shared this valuation of the jury system, as shown by their enshrining the right to a jury trial in both civil (7th Amendment) and criminal (6th Amendment) trials into the Constitution.

I suppose jury nullification protects minorities against majoritarian tyranny (in some cases), and allows adjustments to the letter of the law to adapt to the demands of justice in a particular case. The jury acts as society's moral conscience - doling out mercy where the community deems appropriate and allowing exemptions where justice would seem to require it.

My Views

My problem with this romantic view of juries as the arbiter of justice is that, well, I don't trust juries in this role.

I admit I am a complete elitist on the question of juries in general. I favor striking the jury system all together in favor of a more managerial / inquisitorial judging system, as in Germany. (Of course, this is completely unrealistic insofar as it would require an overhaul of the judicial appointment system -- additional training, for example, and changes to the federal rules, and the not-insignificant task of amending the Constitution to wipe away the jury trial right.)

It's not so much that I'm uncomfortable with there being exceptions and exemptions to The Rule of Law - though that certainly makes me uncomfortable as well. (I, ... like Scalia, tend to prefer bright lines, nice boxes...)

I think I'm just uncomfortable with juries. I would trust judges - with modifications, per the German system - to act in this ... role of meting out justice, much more than juries, because juries are completely unaccountable. Judges, by contrast, would write their opinions down for all of posterity. They have, at a minimum, legal training and analytical ability. They would have some knowledge of precedent. They have the same cognitive and emotional biases as jurors, but they are checked both by appellate review and the requirement of the written opinion.

Perhaps I'm guilty of over-romanticizing the capabilities of a judge, and poo-poo-ing on the abilities of the common American man/woman... but... isn't it time for America to ditch the jury system? Or at least to ditch this jury nullification doctrine, or to hold juries more accountable?