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| Re: George Zimmerman Is WRONG (1276660) | |||
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Re: George Zimmerman Is WRONG |
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Posted by Nilet on Sun Mar 29 13:50:31 2015, in response to Re: George Zimmerman Is WRONG, posted by Dand124 on Sun Mar 29 12:44:02 2015. And I believe jury nullification can only be used to acquit a defendant not convict one...No, it can be used to convict too. Indeed, it often has. The youngest person to be executed in the United States (George Stinney, age 14 in 1944) was convicted for a crime his jury couldn't have believed he was guilty of— he was black, they were white, they nullified. ... if a judge found out jury convicted a defendant while believing him to be innocent of charges he would throw out the verdict. The judge can't ask the jury why they rendered the verdict. Even if the jurors later admitted they thought the defendant was innocent, that doesn't mean the charge is tossed— although I can't think of any cases offhand that specifically pertain to nullification, there are plenty of cases where jurors later recanted their verdict after new evidence of a defendant's innocence is revealed. Unfortunately, even 12 jurors agreeing to recant their verdict doesn't overturn it. The fact is that reversing a criminal conviction is incredibly difficult— plenty of innocent people spend decades trying; some never succeed. Legally, if the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, the trial judge does have the right to throw it out if he believes that no reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty, but this is extremely rare and almost never happens. (If the judge believes a defendant's innocence is obvious enough to justify such a thing, the charge usually doesn't go to the jury in the first place; a judge can enter a verdict of "not guilty" without a jury's input.) Once the trial has ended and the conviction is entered, though, the only way to reverse it is by appeal, which is incredibly difficult. |
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