Jury Nullification (full resolution in R1)

Thanks to Con for the debate.Inaction in the face of injustice makes us complicit in the injustice. Because we must intercede where injustice is observed, I affirm the topic.I. The Law as IntegrityTo first place jury nullification (JRNL) into context, we ought to consider what we mean when we talk about "the law." After all, it is "the law" that the jury is tasked with upholding. Suppose that a government passes a law which bans abortions for women born on even-numbered days, but not for women born on odd-numbered days. Suppose it passes other, similarly quizzical laws, for instance: that blacks have to use separate restrooms from whites, that mango but not orange ice cream is prohibited, that women should be denied the vote, or that watermelon shall be called "waterpumpkin" on Thursdays.I am sure that if I were a legislator voting for those laws, I would get more than a few confused or nasty phone calls, and I think we all would understand why. These laws lack any rhyme or reason. Why ban only half of women (selected seemingly at random) from getting abortions? Why ban blacks from using the same restrooms as women, or ban women from voting, when they can reason just as well as their counterparts? Why ban mango but not orange, or rename watermelons just on Thursdays? It is completely nonsensical.When people make laws in reality, they have reasons for the laws they make. For instance, we mandate the wearing of seat belts to save lives. The principle of respect for life informs and justifies that law. It is the presence of reasons rooted in commonly held principles that distinguishes legitimate law from unacceptable gobbledygook. In this sense, these principles form the foundation of a house, and the individual statutes form the walls. Insofar as the house is held up not just by the laws themselves, but so too by the principles, the principles form part of the governing/legal structure and are just as integral, if not more so, to the legitimacy of the system as the laws themselves."If people accept that they are governed not only by explicit rules laid down in past political decisions but by whatever other standards flow from the principles these decisions assume, then the set of recognized public standards can expand and contract organically, as people become more sophisticated in sensing and exploring what these principles require in new circumstances, without the need for detailed legislation or adjudication on each possible point of conflict." [1]The notion that law is constructed not just by the written rules, but by the conventions and principles that undergird those written statues, is the notion of law as integrity--i.e. lawmakers and citizens insist that the government use a coherent set of principles to craft legislation, and that these principles are integral parts of the legislation themselves. SCOTUS often makes a nod to this kind of a view when it seeks out the intent of the lawmakers in determining what the law means and requires; there is undeniable truth in the fact that principles and reasoning mean a great deal in comprehending our legal system.II. NullificationA. ExamplesHere I just want to provide some examples of cases where the lack of nullification led to unjust results. I will be referencing these as I go.A man received life imprisonment for failing to refund $120.75 in A/C repair fees due to 3-strikes laws; his prior two offenses were credit card fraud and cashing a forged check--together, these offenses came to $108.36. So, for $209.11, he will spend his life behind bars. [2] Mandatory minimum drug laws saw Atiba Parker sentenced to 42 years in prison for selling less than 3 grams of crack. [3] Todd Hannigan got 15 years in prison for trying to kill himself with a handful of Vicotin, again due to mandatory minimums. [3] James Taylor also got 15 years for possessing an amount of crack so small that police termed it "unweighable." [4] People have received life imprisonment for possessing 32 grams of marijuana, passing out a few grams of LSD at a concert, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing an abusive stepfather's firearm, and making a drunken threat to a police officer. [5]We can also point to more historic examples. Northern juries failed to convicted escaping slaves of violating the fugitive slave act. In the case of John Peter Zenger, charged with seditious libel, the truthfulness of what was published was not considered a valid defense against the charge, merely publishing the material (even if it was true) was sufficient to be guilty. [6]B. Making ExceptionsWritten laws are inflexible documents. Lawmakers, once the pass a version of a text, set the codified law in stone for the duration of its existence. Exceptions beyond those mentioned in the text simply don't count. Yet, lawmakers are hampered by a frustrating reality: they cannot envision every circumstance in which the law might be misapplied, and therefore cannot create a law that could never be applied against the principles which gave rise to it. You cannot make enough exceptions and caveats to exempt all possible unjust applications of the law. JRNL is a defendant's last line of defense against the inevitable truth that laws can be contorted in ways never imagined by their makers to unduly harm those that don't deserve it.Eliminating JRNL as a tool would, in effect, inhibit the legal system from recognizing and adapting to these exceptional cases not addressed in the legislation itself. Doing away with it would be like saying, "let's obliterate a key tool we have of stopping the malfunctions in the system." I doubt that 3-strikes laws were designed to imprison people on the basis of a $120 check. I doubt that laws against theft were designed to prevent people from keeping themselves safe from abusive spouses. I doubt that mandatory minimums were designed to give people life for 32 grams of pot. These laws were designed to make it easier to incarcerate the most dangerous or prolific offenders and to prevent theft; yet, Con would have us say that it was totally fine to produce these verdicts. He would have us pretend that applications of the law are always good.C. Check on OppressionJRNL allows for juries to void oppressive laws or misapplications of law. Consider the cases of the fugitive slaves and Zenger; in both cases, the freedoms (of person and of speech) of the defendants were at stake. When government overreaches and attempts to apply the law in a way that undermines our democratic society, JRNL is often the most direct and immediate bulwark against that overreach. Moreover, the presence of a jury here is itself a check on power. If the jury's only job were to ascertain the facts and apply the letter of the law to those facts, their job could be better performed by a commission of trained legal experts and investigators. Yet, the Constitution vests the power of conviction not in a commission of this sort, but in a group of common citizens. The fact that we impanel our peers to judge us implies strongly that we want people rendering verdicts who are capable of judging the circumstances of the law's application, not just the letter of the law itself. Juries themselves were thus not intended simply to act as stooges of the government, but to challenge the government when necessary."Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge...[J]ury trial provisions in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a fundamental decision about the exercise of official power--a reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power, so typical of our State and Federal Governments in other respects, found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence." [1]JRNL may also help reduce racial biases in application of law (e.g. drug laws), where minorities are confronted with overly harsh applications of the law in court.III. ConclusionLaw as integrity suggests that law is not merely the collection of written statutes created by legislators, but also that law is the collection of principles on which law rests and is legitimated. Any attempt to de-link the written law from the principles would delegitimize the laws themselves; they are inseparable concepts. In situations were law violates these essential principles, the law divorces itself from its own reason for being, at least in the circumstance in which the violation occurs. In that moment, the law becomes no less absurd and unworthy of being upheld then a law requiring us to call watermelons "waterpumpkins" on Thursdays. The law as integrity, because it places importance not just on the words, but on the logic behind them, also permits juries the leeway to reject applications of the law which violate commonly held values, which produces positive end-results for justice, democracy, and equality. It also enables juries in their verdict-rendering process to account for the practical limitations lawmakers face.Only by permitting JRNL can we protect the importance of principle in the construct of law, because this tool is essential to prevent literal, unthinking application of written statutes even when that would compromise justice. Thus, if we value the integrity of the legal system, and if we value justice, fairness, and due process, we ought to affirm the topic. IV. Sources1- http://tinyurl.com...2 - http://tinyurl.com...3 - http://tinyurl.com...4 - http://tinyurl.com...5 - http://tinyurl.com...6 - http://tinyurl.com...Thank you! Please Vote Pro. Over to Con...