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Food Not Bombs trial rescheduled after too many jurors objected to $500 fine for feeding homeless
(www.houstonchronicle.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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To over-simplify, as I understand things...
There's a variety of reasons a juror can be rejected, with one of them being "the juror is not willing to follow the law, as written". This seems to be what's happening here, the law says that if a person does X, the penalty is fine Y, and these jurors are saying "I would not issue fine Y even if you prove they did X."
To an extent, this is the system working they way it's supposed to, one of the checks on unreasonable laws is being unable to find people willing to enforce them in good conscience.
Although that process can also be heavily abused, such as when all white juries would routinely find white defendants not guilty when they very obviously lynched black people.
How simple can this be?
Could I convict someone for a victimless crime that helped people? The answer is yes. Yes of course I could. I could also have an affair, blow up my car, do a naked tap dance on my boss' desk, tell my kids that I don't love them, and finish the day trying to underwater basketweave.
If the laws of the physics does not prevent me from doing something the answer to the question "can I x" is yes. If the question is it likely well that is a much different story.
People have to learn how to jury nullify properly