Jury Nullification Persuasive

In our society, ethnicity does have major effects on our judicial practices and courtroom proceedings do to The Sentencing Project research. It has also affected several different places where we live. For example, Poverty stricken areas has more of a possibility to experience much more crime than a place that is more fruitful employment and has maintained wealth. The issues with both class and race are more likely to impact on the likelihood of involvement with the treatment within the system and the criminal justice system. As long as society keeps racial tension in existence within the court system it will always exist. There could be some ways to stop it; one is by educating anyone involved in the criminal justice career especially our police. There are many times were a person is judged because of the ethnicity or race that the person belongs to. Such as, 9/11 when two planes crashed into the twin towers.

Since that day Islamic people were looked at as terrorists. Some of the problems are that we are more afraid of what we do not understand, but stubborn to either educate or get educated when it comes to differences. In the criminal justice field, a person must always act fair and professional. This could all be corrected by supervision, training, and daily interactions with other different people from different ethnicity. We usually have the tendency to stereotype different people do to their different color, areas that they come from, and because of some of the different religions or practices that they believe in than we do. Education would be the first step in correcting or trying to correct this problem. Jury nullification is defined as a jury who has the assumptions that the defendant is guilty of any charges, but handed out a non-guilty verdict just because of their own reasons. Jury nullification happens when a jury in a criminal trail refuses to convict a defendant even though there is proof of guilt because the jurors have the assumption that the law is being unjust applied or just unjust.

The reasons might be because of the jurors view on the injustice of the application, the unjustness of the law, and/or the race of the party. Such as, famous cases like Harriet Tubman, John Peter’s trial in 1735, and Dr. Kevorkian are some examples. In addition, some cases that involve terminally ill people charged for doing drugs are usually given leniency by nullification. The debate ensue around nullification, but when there is believes to be race based the debate heightens. The difference of race based jury nullification according to the Cato Policy Report is that the nullification is solely based on the defendant’s race. Paul Butler is a graduate from Yale with a J.D. from Harvard and is currently a law professor at George Washington University; he is a strong supporter of race-based jury nullification. He believes that “black juries should acquit black defendants for nonviolent offenses even when the evidence of guilt is clear” (Cato, 1999).

Overall, whether the person is against or for race based jury nullification, it is still a highly debatable issue. Each argument has a great amount of strong facts and opinions to support them as well as multiple of reasons. After thorough research to my belief about race based jury nullification should not be should not be conducted by jurors. As a whole we are not opposed to jury nullification, but when race is a factor we are opposed to nullification. By any means community unity is not promoted by race based jury nullification. Simply this thought process is based on discrimination and simply racial; as a society we are trying to help educate and show everyone how any racial based ideas can be very negative. It does not mean that races should not promote what they stand for and should not be proud of who they are, but when a jury finds a defendant innocent and/or guilty because of race alone is a major problem. What jurors need to base his or her verdicts is on information, facts, and evidence presented to them throughout a trial; not on racial biased opinions that need to be left out.

References
Jury Nullification. (2013). Retrieved from
Jury Nullification. (2013). Retrieved from
http://www.nothirdsolution.com/2008/03/21/jury-nullification-the-only-moral-option/ Judicial Practices and Courtroom Proceedings . (2013).