GUEST BLOG By Shaun Sanders,
3L at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law

Jury nullification is an oddity of discussion in law school.

The combined legislative wealth of numerous cultures spanned over centuries of time has resulted in our current amalgamation of laws and the method in which they are applied. As a result, the laws we live under today are inherently a reflection of a past point in time. Consider how many laws created by generations long dead are presently applied to modern circumstances. Indeed, the general ebb and flow of legislative revision is a demonstration of the living’s attempt to rewrite rules of the dead. But how does jury nullification fit in?

I look at law, as a whole, as being a sort of robot butler… let’s call it Justice Bot. We created this servant to make our lives more enjoyable, safe, and, generally, stable. To maintain order and prevent Justice Bot from straight up murdering each and every one of us, we install 3 branches of government with numerous, staggered layers of checks and balances. And then? We let it on its way — autonomously controlling our day to day lives.

Jury nullification, to me, is the “human-check” against the machine. It’s the last point in the system where we have a bunch of living, flesh-filled human beings look at the product of our Justice Bot and say, “Good Job!” or, alternatively, “You effed it up!” More often than not, jury nullification is likely unnecessary. After all, Justice Bot is a fairly efficient, effective being.

However, every now and then, a glitch occurs and, suddenly, someone’s life gets sucked into the machine, processed appropriately, but results in a potential punishment that just doesn’t sit quite right. Despite the lack of technical error, and despite the fact that an individual accused of committing certain acts appears to have, in fact, committed those acts, it still feels like Justice Bot isn’t quite on its A-game… so we pull the plug, learn from it, and try to improve our robot as best we can.

In other words, jury nullification enables us as living, existing citizens to correct for potential false-positives created by antiquated law. In fact, jury nullification played an important role in the United States to acquit people who were being charged under the Fugitive Slave Act. At that time, Justice Bot was programmed to punish folks who aided slaves in escaping their owners. When Justice Bot caught such an offender, it processed them accordingly. However, when it came time to sentence them, juries said, “You know what… okay, these people are guilty — but I’m okay with that.” and they kept acquitting folks until Justice Bot received a legislative firmware update.

Some people argue it is unfair for a minority of society to override Justice Bot. In a way, it is unfair. Realistically, though, it doesn’t really matter. Jury selection represents a random subsection of society within a specific jurisdiction. Sure, it is possible that in an area where 99.99% of a jurisdiction feel Law A is just and right, there may be a passionate minority who oppose it… but the probability of that minority being able to get on the juries to override Justice Bot is vast. Rather, jury nullification provides a valuable trade-off for society where we allow pockets of modern-views to undermine established, hard-coded legal theories.

In Justice Bot, We Trust.