The people have an inherent and unalienable right to vote their conscience when rendering jury verdicts. There is no doubt that jury nullification was one of the rights and powers that the people were exercising in 1791 when the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution was adopted. In American legal theory, jury power was enormous, and subject to few controls. There was a maxim of law that the jury was judge both of law and of fact in criminal cases. This idea was particularly strong in the first Revolutionary generation when memories of royal justice were fresh.
Jury nullification is therefore one of the rights . . .
And it is one of the powers . . . Jury nullification is decentralization of political power. It is the people s most important veto in our constitutional system. The jury vote is the only time the people ever vote on the application of a real law in real life. All other votes are for hypotheticals.