The idea of jury nullification has been around since this country had juries. The idea is pretty simple: juries can vote to acquit defendants, even when the government proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt. If you serve on a jury, and you listen to all the evidence, then you can still vote “not guilty.” And you can walk right out of the courthouse, and tell everyone that the guy did it, but you didn’t care. Maybe you didn’t like the law. Maybe you didn’t like the prosecutor. Whatever it is, it’s your right to vote to acquit. The defendant will walk. The judge and the government can’t do anything about it.
In the history of this country, jury nullification has been especially prominent in periods of open race hatred. During the 19th century, juries often refused to convict people who were accused of helping escaped slaves, in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Later, in the civil rights era, some all-white juries would acquit people who clearly committed acts of violence against blacks. So there are clearly good uses of jury nullification, and bad instances of it, as you’d expect. But on balance, this is a feature, not a bug, of our judicial system. That’s the conventional wisdom.
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