Editing Jury nullification (section)

===United States===
{{Main|Jury nullification in the United States}}
In the United States, jury nullification first appeared just before the [[American Revolutionary War]], when colonial juries frequently exercised their nullification power, principally in maritime cases and cases implicating free speech. Jury nullification became so common that many British prosecutors gave up trying maritime cases since conviction seemed hopeless.<ref>{{cite web|last1=McKnight|first1=Aaron|title=Jury Nullification as a Tool to Balance the Demands of Law and Justice|url=http://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2890&context=lawreview|access-date=10 December 2014}}</ref> Before the [[American Civil War]], juries sometimes refused to convict for violations of the [[Fugitive Slave Act]]. Later, during [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]], juries often nullified alcohol control laws.<ref name= UMKC /> That resistance may have contributed to the adoption of the [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|Twenty-first Amendment]], which repealed Prohibition and the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eighteenth Amendment]].

In a well-known example of jury nullification, at the end of [[Wild Bill Hickok]]'s trial for the [[Hickok–Tutt shootout|manslaughter of Davis Tutt]] in 1865, Judge [[Sempronius Boyd]] gave the jury two instructions. He first instructed the jury that a conviction was its only option under the law. He then instructed them that they could apply the unwritten law of the "fair fight" and acquit. Hickok was acquitted; the verdict was not necessarily universally popular with the press and public.<ref>[http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/ucla/lubet48.htm "Legal Culture, Wild Bill Hickok and the Gunslinger Myth"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070213073825/http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/ucla/lubet48.htm |date=February 13, 2007}} [[University of Texas at Austin|University of Texas]] Tarlton Law Library</ref><ref>O'Connor, Richard (1959). ''Wild Bill Hickok'' p. 85.</ref> There have been contemporary instances of activists being arrested for informing jurists of their right of jury nullification in front of court houses, with subsequent rulings that arresting people for this activity is unconstitutional.<ref>{{cite web|title=He Was Arrested for Promoting Jury Nullification. A Federal Court Says That Was Illegal.|url=https://reason.com/2022/08/05/he-was-arrested-for-promoting-jury-nullification-a-federal-court-says-that-was-illegal/|date=August 5, 2022}}</ref>

====Fugitive Slave Act====
Juries across the North acquitted defendants who had clearly breached the [[Fugitive Slave Act]] in the 1850s. Part of the [[Compromise of 1850]], it had been passed to mollify Southern slaveowners, who were otherwise threatening to secede from the Union. Secretary of State [[Daniel Webster]] was a key supporter of the law as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high-profile convictions, but the jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution when defendants were accused of rescuing [[Shadrach Minkins]] in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to his owner. The juries convicted none of the men. Webster tried to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the North, and his [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]] passed over him again when it chose a presidential nominee in 1852.<ref>Gary Collison, {{"'}}This Flagitious Offense': Daniel Webster and the Shadrach Rescue Cases, 1851-1852", ''New England Quarterly'' Vol. 68, No. 4 (December 1995), pp. 609–625 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/365877 in JSTOR] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160509175407/http://www.jstor.org/stable/365877 |date=May 9, 2016}}</ref>

====After Civil War====
White defendants accused of crimes against black people and other minorities were often acquitted by [[all-white juries]], especially in the South, even in the face of irrefutable evidence. An example is the [[Emmett Till#Trial|trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam]].<ref>Conrad, Clay S. (1998). ''Jury Nullification, The Evolution of a Doctrine'', Carolina Academic Press, pp. 167–185. {{ISBN|0890897026}}.</ref>

====21st century====
In the 21st century, many discussions of jury nullification center on drug laws, which some consider unjust in principle or because they are seen to discriminate against certain groups.<ref>Fukurai, Hiroshi, and Richard Krooth (2003). ''Race in the jury box: affirmative action in jury selection''. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. p. 178. {{OCLC|872139501}}</ref> A jury nullification advocacy group estimates that 3–4% of all jury trials involve nullification,<ref name= FIJA /> and a recent rise in [[hung jury|hung juries]] is seen by some as being indirect evidence that juries have begun to consider the validity or the fairness of the laws themselves.<ref name= WashPost />

====Judicial opinion====
In the 1895 case of ''[[Sparf v. United States]]'', written by Associate Justice [[John Marshall Harlan]], the US Supreme Court held 5-4 that a trial judge has no responsibility to inform the jury of the right to nullify laws.<ref>{{ussc|name=Sparf v. United States|156|51|1895}}.</ref> That decision, often cited, has led to a common practice by US judges to penalize anyone who attempts to present a nullification argument to jurors and to declare a mistrial if such argument has been presented to them. In some states, jurors are likely to be struck from the panel during ''[[voir dire]]'' if they do not agree to accept as correct the rulings and instructions of the law as provided by the judge.<ref name= PeoplevEstrada2006/>

In later rulings the courts continued to prohibit informing juries about jury nullification. In a 1969, [[Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals]] decision, ''[[U.S. v. Moylan]]'', 417 [[F.2d]] 1002 (4th Cir.1969), the Court affirmed the concept of jury nullification, but upheld the power of a court to refuse to permit an instruction to the jury to this effect.<ref name= USvsMoylan1969/> In 1972, in ''[[United States v. Dougherty]]'', 473 [[F.2d]] 1113, the [[United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]] issued a ruling similar to ''Moylan'' that affirmed the ''de facto'' power of a jury to nullify the law but upheld the denial of the defense's chance to instruct the jury about the power to nullify.<ref name= USvsDougherty1972/>

In 1988, the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit|Sixth Circuit]] upheld a jury instruction: "There is no such thing as valid jury nullification." In ''United States v. Thomas'' (1997), the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit|Second Circuit]]  ruled that jurors can be removed if there is evidence that they intend to nullify the law. The Supreme Court has not recently confronted the issue of jury nullification. In 2017, a jury was instructed: "You cannot substitute your sense of justice, whatever that means, for your duty to follow the law, whether you agree with it or not. It is not for you to determine whether the law is just or whether the law is unjust. That cannot be your task. There is no such thing as valid jury nullification. You would violate your oath and the law if you willfully brought a verdict contrary to the law given to you in this case." The [[Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit|Ninth Circuit]] upheld the first three sentences of the jury's instruction and overruled the remainder but deemed that instruction a [[harmless error]] and affirmed the conviction.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://reason.com/blog/2017/06/20/although-juries-can-acquit-the-guilty-9t|title=Juries Can Acquit the Guilty, 9th Circuit Says, but 'There Is No Right to Nullification'|date=2017-06-20|work=Reason.com|access-date=2017-06-25|language=en}}</ref>

====State laws====
{{Expand section|date = July 2013}}
<!--The basic issues for each state are: is jury nullification possible?; can the jury be informed of this? The default position is probably yes, and no. Perhaps this should first be stated in this section, and then exceptions, and nuances could be listed.-->
In 2002, South Dakota voters rejected by a 78% margin a state constitutional amendment to permit criminal defendants to argue for jury nullification.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hannaford-Agor |first=Paula L. |last2=Hans |first2=Valerie P. |author-link2=Valerie Hans |date=26 August 2003 |title=NULLIFICATION AT WORK? A GLIMPSE FROM THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR STATE COURTS STUDY OF HUNG JURIES |url=http://www.ncsc-jurystudies.org/~/media/Microsites/Files/CJS/What%20We%20Do/Nullification_Final.ashx |access-date=9 January 2018 |archive-date=November 28, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141128223628/http://www.ncsc-jurystudies.org/~/media/Microsites/Files/CJS/What%20We%20Do/Nullification_Final.ashx |url-status=dead }}</ref> On June 18, 2012, New Hampshire passed a law explicitly allowing defense attorneys to inform juries about jury nullification.<ref>{{citation|publisher=Reason Magazine|date=June 29, 2012|title=New Hampshire Adopts Jury Nullification Law|last=Tuccille |first=J.D. |url=http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/29/new-hampshire-adopts-jury-nullification}}</ref> On October 24, 2014, the New Hampshire Supreme Court effectively nullified the law and held that the wording of the statute does not allow defense attorneys to tell juries they can nullify a law.<ref>{{cite web|title=New Hampshire Supreme Court Nullifies Jury Nullification Statute|url=https://fija.org/2014/10/24/new-hampshire-supreme-court-nullifies-jury-nullification-statute|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171030041036/https://fija.org/2014/10/24/new-hampshire-supreme-court-nullifies-jury-nullification-statute|url-status=dead|archive-date=30 October 2017|website=Fully Informed Jury Association|date=24 October 2014}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=What About New Hampshire? |last=Tynan |first=Kirsten C. |website=Fully Informed Jury Association |date=6 September 2021 |url= https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/law-and-legal-cases/what-about-new-hampshire.html}}</ref> The Maryland State Constitution, Declaration of Rights, states that "in the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction." Nevertheless, the Maryland Courts jury service brochure states that "it is your duty to accept what the judge is saying about the law, and how it is to be applied to the case."