No Stupid Questions

Jury Nullification arises from the constitution's guarantee of the right to a jury trial. This guarantee creates one of a few constitutional obligations on the individual: The obligation to judge your peer, as a layperson.

The judge has a slightly different duty, due to "Separation of Powers". The judge is charged with enforcing legislated law. The judge is not permitted to evaluate whether that law should or should not exist; the judge must presume that the law is valid unless it conflicts with a superior law, such as the constitution. This is why the judge must treat nullification as a secret: They violate the separation of powers as soon as they tell the jury they are free to ignore legislated law.

You, the juror, are not subject to the separation of powers. As a member of "We The People", the Constitution derives its powers from you, not the other way around. Your duty, as a juror, is to provide the accused with their right to be judged by a jury of their peers.

Your obligation arises from the Constitution, and to the accused. Where legislated law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution supersedes the legislated law. Where you, as a layperson, believes that the legislated law does not adequately address the circumstances of the accused, you are not just "allowed" to find the accused not guilty; you are morally obligated to do so.

You will be asked if you hold any beliefs that would prevent you from rendering a judgement solely on the basis of the law, which would make you ineligible to serve on a jury. The constitution is law. My beliefs arise from the constitution, and I hold no beliefs that would prevent me from rendering a judgment on the basis of anything other than the law. I can honestly answer "No".

If jurors can ultimately do whatever they want, what stops them from using nullification all the time?

We don't actually know how often juries nullify. It is impossible to distinguish between an acquittal on the basis of "Reasonable Doubt" and an acquittal on the basis of "This law did not envision this defendant's specific circumstances".

"what stops them from using nullification all the time?"

the fact no one tells them.

"Jury Nullification" does not "exist" (as in, its not really part of the law), its merely the term we use to describe the logical consequence of the two facts:

1. When a jury renders a "not guilty" verdict, its final and cannot be overturned (in most of the countries today that uses juries)

2. The jurors cannot be punished for making the "wrong" verdict

Therefore, a Juror could just... refuse to convict even if theres overwhelming evidence. So the juror thinks the defendent is guilty, but gives the verdict of "not guilty". That is what we call "Jury Nullification".

Examples:

Abolitionists refusing to convict escaped slaves.

White supremacists refuse to convict mobs who lynched innocent black people.

See that's the issue, it could be used for good, but could also be used for evil.

Once you mention it in the jury instructions, the likelihood of jury nullification goes up.

As to why they aren't supposed to do that, its because they are supposed to be judges of facts, not judge of law (aka: they have to decide solely on the evidence, and should not decide on things like constitutionality of the law or morals/ethics, its in the Juror Instructions to judge only on the facts. But there's nothing stopping a juror from just silently ignoring those instructions. Judges are not mindreaders.

They just can't talk about it, because it would be contempt of court (since they'd be going against juror instructions), at least until deliberations begin, once that happens, (as far as I know) I think they could talk about it, but I'm not sure if the judge could declare a mistrial if they find out. But in order to do a jury nullification, all the jurors (if the trial is in the USA) would have to agree to vote "not guilty" anyways as jury decisions need to be unanimous, and if they all agree to just ignore the evidence, nobody would be snitching to the judge, so the judge wouldn't know anyways. (Jury Deliberation proceedings happens in secret amongst the jurors).

I’m just curious how this all works in practice. If jurors can ultimately do whatever they want, what stops them from using nullification all the time?

You just avoid mentioning Jury Nullification. Try to get on the jury, then in deliberations, try to sow doubts on the evidence. Remember: you need everyone to agree on the verdict, or else its a hung jury and there will be a new jury chosen for a new trial, and the prosecution can keep trying forever until a verdict had been reached (or the prosecution gives up, or the judge dismisses the case with prejudice).

Use phrases like:

"Are we sure this is the perpetrator?"

"What if the prosecution is wrong?"

"Maybe they caught the wrong person?"

"This evidence looks suspicious to me"

"I think the defendent is being framed"

etc...

Try to hide the fact thay you are trying to use jury nullification

I'm not sure if you can talk about it after deliberations begin (I am not a lawyer), but if you are desparate to get the unaninimity to acquit, you could just out yourself and be like: "Are we really gonna convict this person? The victim deserved it!" (Again, I am not a lawyer, this could get you in trouble if a juror snitches on you).

This is a super unpopular opinion in 2025, but I'm a grown up and happy to take the downvotes.

Jury Nullification isn't really a "thing" as in it's not intended to be a function available to the jury.

The justice system intends for Jury's to perform a very specific function: to find a defendant guilty or not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

However, jurors must be able to make that determination free from any concerns as to repercussions against them. The system couldn't work if a juror feared being held responsible for their finding. Imagine if overlooking or misinterpreting something as a juror could be a crime? It would present a very ready mechanism for corruption "Any juror that finds Trump guilty will be subject to prosecution by the next republican government".

So, jurors have absolute protection from any responsibility as to their findings, and as such they are able to say "we think luigi probably did commit this crime but he seems like a great guy so our unanimous finding is not-guilty".

It's a subversion of the justice system. Jurors may take this third option without consequence but they are not upholding their responsibilities to the justice system.

My concern with jury nullification is that if jurors can decide whether the law should apply in whatever case, they're essentially making up the law based on nothing more than their feelings about what happened. Additionally, it makes a court case more of a popularity contest than a fair application of the law.

The common rebuttal to what I've said is that the justice system is rarely just. That may be the case but justice is not going to be improved by moving to a kangaroo court. We may as well throw defendants in the river and pronounce those who do not drown to be guilty.

So I can pitch in here. I was a juror on a trial where jury nullification was talked about. Multiple potential jurors did bring up jury nullification and the final jury contained some members who openly stated that they believed in jury nullification.

The judge and the prosector actually didn't really care that much - the judge just asked the juror something along the lines of "ok, but do you think you can stay impartial for this trial?", and if the juror said yes, they were on the jury. And the prosecutor didn't dismiss anyone.

My understanding is that both the prosecutor and the defense get 10 freebie dismissals - they can dismiss up to 10 potential jurors for any reason. If the prosecutor wants to maximize the chances of getting a guilty verdict, they may potentially try to use those freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who know about jury nullification. But it seems like, at least in my case, knowing about it (or even openly stating that you believe in it) doesn't automatically disqualify you.

The defense started talking jury nullification halfway through the trial (it was a wild trial), and that was where the judge drew the line. His reasoning was that the it was the judge's role to instruct the jury on their job and role, so the defense cannot instruct the jury on their own about what to do. So it seems like you can talk about jury nullification, just not if you're the defendant.

As for why jury nullification isn't commonplace, the prosecutor will try to convince the jury that the defendant deserves punishment. It doesn't matter if you believe in jury nullification if you also believe that the defendant deserves to be in jail. If the prosecutor doesn't make a convincing argument, then you'd just vote innocent and that's not really jury nullification. So there's really quite a long criteria for jury nullification to occur:

1. The jury knows about and believes in jury nullification
2. The jury disagrees with a particular law or case but also isn't emotionally charged enough about it so as to remain impartial
3. The prosecutor doesn't use their freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who might be willing to do a nullification
4. The jury believes that the law was broken, but is also unconvinced that the defendant deserves punishment

Pretty simple. A jury is 12 rrandom-ish people (ignoring the Voir Dire process where lawyers argue about who deserves to be on the jury).

If you openly are for jury nullification, then the prosecutor will try to throw you out in the Voir Dire proces (its unfair to the prosecutor if you think that you can ignore the Prosecutor's argument entirely). Then they select someone else to be part of the jury.

Secondly, all 12 members of the jury have to agree on the decision. So all 12 of you have to agree that the law is unfair in this case and opt for jury nullification instead. There's examples where this happens: ex a child gets charged for child pornography when they send a picture of themselves. After all, they "distributed child porn" which is grossly illegal by the law, but the jury can agree "Yeah, they broke the law but don't deserve to be punished in this case". That's the kind of thing jury nullification was created for, when everything is "technically correct", but the jury is smart enough to realize that its not "Truly a crime".

Now people bring up the Jury Nullification as a potential... erm... way to get someone out of a murder case. Highly unlikely that you'd get all 12 people agreeing on that. At best, you'd probably get a hung jury if say, 2 or 3 people agreed ahead of time to use jury nullification.

Furthermore, by showing that you've got "interest" in a case means that you're no longer a random person off the street, but instead someone who may have been misinformed by media about a case. A jury must be ignorant about the case and have an open mind for the trial process to work at all. So people with pre-existing knowledge about cases are often thrown out during Voir Dire. This is because many pieces of evidence are often determined to be illegal. (Ex: if the police illegally wiretapped you, then the evidence CANNOT be shown to the jury, even if the wiretap was published in the media). So the evidence that shows up in court is itself part of a large process and selective ignorance is in fact key to the whole shebang. (How else can you punish a prosecutor for illegally obtaining evidence? Even if the evidence is true, it must be struck out of the record and the prosecutor is not allowed to use such evidence in their case).

its not an official spelt out thing but more a right that arises from the peer jury system.