Jury Nullification: The rights of a Juror in danger

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the jury nullification and civil rights movement which was led by William Kunstler. Jury nullification is the right to a jury to disregard the law and vote their conscience when deciding on a verdict in a case. This happens when the jury believes that the law applied against the accused is unethical or inappropriate. There is a law well known, but it creates problems for the courts when jurors are to know and apply.

Jury Nullification: The rights of a Juror in danger

Introduction

William Kunstler was one of the most famous lawyers and the most controversial of the twentieth century. He fought for civil rights and anti-militarist activists represented, but also terrorists and murderers. The rejection of legal liberalism was born of legal practice and experience. Kunstler became famous for defending the Chicago Seven, accused of provoking unrest in the Democratic Party convention in 1968. In the following years from its customers were counted radical American Indians, Black Panthers, Yippies revolutionary (radical youth), along with the likes of Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, a leader who epitomized black power, and Abbie Hoffman. Among his recent clients was the Egyptian Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is on trial for the bombing in 1993 the World Trade Centre in New York. He was born in New York in 1919, studied law Kunstler on the faculties of Yale and Columbia. As he said, chose this career because it "offered a position, prestige and income reasonably high, i.e., for all the wrong reasons." Although his fighting spirit was recognized by all, some criticized him grandstanding, while others praised his imagination and creativity to find unexpected arguments they got the victory for their clients.

Discussion

The jury invalidated in the United States has its origins in British colonial America. The question of having a jury invalidated especially in the case of Zenger (1734) and is rooted in the tradition of common law civil liberties taken from Britain to the American Revolution. John Peter Zenger, printer of the English colonies of New York, was convicted of seditious libel in 1734 for the publication of a newspaper critical of the governor. Jurors acquitted Zenger despite the judge's instructions, this is probably the most famous early example of the jury invalidated in the colonies that became the United States. Use of the jury as a defense of last resort has been supported by many influential people surrounding the development of the U.S. Constitution. For example, John Adams, told the jury: "It's not only their right but the duty ... to find his sentence in his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court. "[1] (Adams, however, referring to the Crown Courts in which judges the king's servants, and not a judicial system independent of the post-revolutionary United States.) Instructed the jury to use the recognition as valid, the first president of the U.S.

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