by H. Allen Hamilton

Created on: November 15, 2011   Last Updated: November 17, 2011

Jury Nullification is a process by which a person or persons are found by a legally impaneled jury to exempted from being convicted and punished by a duly appointed court of law. This situation occurs only when an empaneled jury hears complete evidence from both sides of a legal formal court proceeding. However, they unanimously do not feel the evidence or the sentence or punishment are just and warranted.

There have been very few “Jury Nullifications” in modern history. The law was originally designed to provide persons convicted of an offense and condemned to some punishment. Under the provisions of “nullification”, the jury can disregard and or ignore certain evidence even though the defendant may have been technically guilty, but circumstances justified the defendendant’s actions. The law was created in the early days of the forming of United States. It primarily came into being during the “Slavery” period of America’s history. 

People who lived in the north that were sympathetic to the slaves were often pursued and arrested and tried in court for aiding slaves escape to the northern states. In those states and later in some of the southern states, the juries were allowed to ignore the evidence and the law as being unfair to the person or persons being tried. The premise was that the punishment was far to severe for the seriousness of the offense. Evidence of offenses like aiding and hiding “runaway slaves” in some juries was flatly ignored and the victim was set free. The ironic part was many of the people tried under the “Aiding Runaway Slave Law’ were Caucasian people from the northern and north eastern states.

During the era of Prohibition, the “moral” issue of alcohol was the nation’s main issue and once again “Nullification became an issue in the court system. The problem then was the whole nation WAS NOT behind prohibition. Now this really created a problem in the courts since just indulging in “a little nip” was against the law. Now the government really had a problem in the courts, especially because nearly everyone in the nation liked that “little nip”, including the government and the court system.

Prohibition brought about a change since people were being arrested and tried. However their neighbors were on the juries that heard the cases and in a lot of cases even with absolutely good evidence they were found “not guilty”. A new market was created. 

The “Fifth Amendment” of the “Constitution” clarifies the “Nullfication” rule under law and in fact gives “absolute” power to a jury’s decision. 

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