• Etterra@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    World News is ban-happy, screw em.

    John Oliver did an episode about jury nullification, IIRC. And it’s funny how when you’re on jury duty, they’re not allowed to tell you about jury nullification, but they can’t stop you from discussing or doing it when you’re making your deciding. IMO they should be required to tell you, but as usual, those in power fear anyone outside the system having power of their own.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      You need to lie to the judge under oath to do it. There simply aren’t consequences, but it is very much illegal.

      • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        6 days ago

        Wrong. They try to filter out people who know about jury nullification, but the act itself is not illegal, as you do not have to have the knowledge to accidentally do it anyway.

        • Gregor@gregtech.eu
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          5 days ago

          That seems pretty unfair to filter out people who know about it, it’s basically filtering knowledgeable people.

        • helloworld55@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          Just to be clear, one of the standard questions to ask a potential jury is “you must be able to render a verdict solely on the evidence presented at the trial and in the context of the law as I will give it to you in my instructions, disregarding any other ideas, notions, or beliefs about the law. Are you able to do this?”

          If you know about jury nullification, with the intent of using it, then you need to lie under oath to get past this question.

          The question was taken from the New Mexico US courts

          • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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            5 days ago

            Are you able to do this?

            Ahead of time, I could answer truthfully that I am able. I don’t have to say “but when the time comes, I may choose not to for any reason”

            • helloworld55@lemm.ee
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              I mean that may be “the truth”, but it is purposely not “the whole truth”. Which is a violation of the oath. The only way jury nullification is allowed is if a jury independently decides not to convict, because then jury is unbiased in deciding that the law is wrong or shouldn’t apply.

              Again, if you are selected for jury duty, and you already have decided you will ignore the law to avoid convicting the criminal, then there is no way you can make it past the selection without lying to the court.

              • lad@programming.dev
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                5 days ago

                I think then talks about jury nullification may be changed in such a way that no legal matter is discussed, but a jury is still inclined to act such that nullification happens, and that will be in accordance to the phrasing of the oath

              • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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                4 days ago

                Afaik, in a court of law, the questions they ask matter. If it is a poorly worded question, it is the fault of the one interrogating. Don’t answer your own version of their questions

          • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            5 days ago

            Check the links in the main post. Your example question and many other variations of it are explicitly addressed there.

            But in short, you answer truthfully, but stick to the letter of your answer and not what the judge thinks. There’s nothing illegal about it.

      • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 days ago

        You do not have to lie to the judge. There is no lying to the judge. If the jury decides to ignore evidence and nullify, the judge knows exactly why, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

        • helloworld55@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          Before being selected to be on the jury, the candidates are asked questions after being sworn in, that almost always include language that would disallow ideas of jury nullification.

      • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 days ago

        I was a juror in two different trials and don’t recall ever being asked about my beliefs on jury nullification. It’s been many years though.

        Edit: it seems like I was wrong. Supposedly, jury nullification is not legal in my US state.

        Edit 2: perhaps it’s still not completely settled in my state yet?

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          5 days ago

          See links in top post. Jury nullification is legal, it is inherently part of how our justice system is structured. However, most judges and prosecutors would much rather prefer you didn’t know your rights, and have outright lied in court about it.

          • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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            5 days ago

            Thanks. I hadn’t read your link, but found articles giving conflicting case history in my state. It was a quick read of those articles though.

      • helloworld55@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        Why are people downvoting this? Jury nullification itself isn’t illegal, but committing perjury definitely is, which is what Maalus is pointing out

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    Jury nullification has always been a hot topic on Reddit, so of course it’s going to continue as a hot topic on Lemmy. The percentage of American Reddit and Lemmy users who know about jury nullification is doubtless at a statistically significant higher rate than the whole of the American public.

    That said, you guys must know that not all people are comfortable with murder, even when it involves an asshole. And that is a good thing. We need compassionate people in the world. Compassion is cool, we need a measure of it tempering everything else.

    That’s it. Just a reminder that people are gonna people. And a complete lack of surprise at yet another discussion involving jury nullification within these past 10yrs of Reddit/Lemmy.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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    6 days ago

    It’s a TOS violation to discuss one of the very real and legitimate responsibilities you have as a juror?

    Like, nullification is a thing because it’s very much the absolute very very last defense against bullshit laws being used against people by a corrupt judicial system.

    It’s a moral imperative and something anyone sitting on a jury should understand and be willing to use.

    What an absurd take, especially since it sounds like it’s all the .world admins having it.

    • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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      6 days ago

      theres no faster way to get kicked out of the selection process than mentioning it.

      if you want out of jury duty, mention jury nullification and you are out of there.

      • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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        6 days ago

        … and in jail for contempt of court.

        If all one had to do was utter ‘JN’ to get out of JD for free nobody even slightly inconvenienced would ever serve.

        In reality, they dance around the fact. Ask you questions designed to get you to admit you have no ‘valid’ reason to nullify if you did, at which point you are either guilty of lying under oath or contempt of court.

        You have to be firm in your convictions and hold your ground with a valid justification if you are going to try using nullification awareness to weasel out of jury duty because the judge will press, and press until they either think you’re a true believer of a valid reason, or are just trying to shirk your duty.

        • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Link me even one case of that happening.

          If they think you even might support nullification, they don’t want you on the jury. They wouldn’t risk that you’re joking or trying to get out of serving.

            • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              Those are cases of attempting to encourage specific juries to nullify. You’re not gonna be held in contempt for revealing you support jury nullification during selection.

              • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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                5 days ago

                held in contempt for revealing you support jury nullification during selection.

                Yes, you will. If you flat out say “I support Jury Nullification” during voir dire the judge will consider it flagrant contempt for the courts and deal with you accordingly.

                What will actually happen is you will be asked a vague question that skirts the issue like “do you have any beliefs which would render you unable to convict or acquit based on the evidence alone?”. If you answer in the affirmative an explanation will be demanded at which point what will your answer be? “I support jury nullification”, same deal. If you have an actual belief that gets in the way like say you abhor the death penalty they will say things like ‘case is regarding a traffic ticket, your concerns do not apply. any other reasons?’. Their goal being to show that any of your reasons either do not apply, or are insufficient in the judge’s eyes for you not to do your duty. At that point you’d still be a juror and if you do nullify for whatever reason there’s nothing they can do afaik.

                You’re dreaming if you think you wouldn’t be punished for praising jury nullification in front of a judge and an entire slew of potential jurors during voir dire, when someone was handing out fliers outside the court building was convicted despite no court being in session, no actual juror receiving the pamphlet, and it held on appeals.

                TBH you want evidence, the evidence is the court system still functioning because if what you said was true it would collapse in on itself.

                • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  5 days ago

                  This is pure bullshit. And that’s not just my opinion, Cornell Law School explains jury nullification on their website, and lists multiple examples of it. Juries in the United States are protected, and you cannot be held responsible for refusing to convict. You will not be punished for it, and if you are, then your rights have been violated and you have a case to sue the government.

                • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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                  5 days ago

                  Yes, you will. If you flat out say “I support Jury Nullification” during voir dire the judge will consider it flagrant contempt for the courts and deal with you accordingly.

                  Source? Cause this is some wild shit.

        • odelik@lemmy.today
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          5 days ago

          Jurors cannot be punished for an incorrect verdict in the USA (where a potential trial would be held if the guy is caught).

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      It’s likely not actually a TOS violation, that person commenting is almost certainly talking out of their ass, likely to try and push their own agenda and make people comply.

    • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      Lemmy.world is a centrist instance. Liberals don’t like the idea that people can do something that the donor class can’t prevent.

  • repungnant_canary@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Also, isn’t lemmy.WORLD supposed to be a worldwide instance? I can discuss jury nullification as much as I want because I’ll never be in the US jury. From my point of view, if I discussed jury nullification and got banned for it, I would treat that as a quite aggressive restriction of free speech.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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    Ok, I wasn’t really that surprised when a bunch of users who were calling for more murder were getting their comments deleted. That’s a bit much and users need to know how to be more vague with their threats, especially with web crawls recording and indexing everything we say online…

    But censoring the discussion of a real legal process is crazy. Well, I’ve made a few comments regarding jury nullification. I’ll report if they get deleted.

    edit: It’s been about 20 hours and none of my Jury Nullification comments have remained. I have a feeling that the .world mods figured out that that discussion was fine or the deleted comments has other reasons to be deleted.

  • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 days ago

    How is jury nullification against .world ToS? It is part of the law! Or more specifically it is literally created from the absence of a law, to allow a fair trial by your peers.

    Courts don’t want you to know about jury nullification but it is not illegal. It is a required part of the judicial system.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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      5 days ago

      so trying to prevent people knowing about is is more akin to trying to prevent people from knowing what rights they have?

  • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I consider human life sacred

    Like the lives of those cut short by denying treatment so CEOs and shareholders can make more money?

    only God may judge us

    Oh, fuck off. If God exists and actually cared, he/she/they would have “judged” the guy a long time ago for introducing needless suffering and cruelty.

    • Localhorst86@feddit.org
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      6 days ago

      only god may judge us

      Is a great argument for jury nullification. Because that will allow for god to decide the shooters verdict.

    • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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      6 days ago

      god is the most cruel entity in the entirety of the bible. kills the most people, causes the most suffering. how anyone can read that book and come away with a positive view of that beast is unfathomable.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        I agree, but that wasn’t quite the point I was trying to make.

        The moderator was on a moral superiority high-horse by suggesting that “only God may judge” a guy who served as the judge for other’s lives through complacent inaction and encouraging policies that put personal gain over humanity.

        The only way that argument wouldn’t have been hypocritical is if he agreed that God was a cruel bastard, and I don’t think that was the case.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Indeed.

            Note that I’m not claiming anything, just pointing out the traditional philosophical parameters of what-is-or-isn’t-‘god’.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          It is impossible for a being to be omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent given the amount of suffering in the world. They can only be two of the three at most:

          Omnipotent + omniscient = Knows about evil, can stop it, but chooses not to.

          Omnipotent + benevolent = Can do something about evil and wants to stop it, is too oblivious to on a large scale.

          Omniscient + benevolent = Knows about evil and wants to stop it, is powerless to do anything significant about it.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            Yeah, that’s the way most people see it.

            As it happens, people don’t generally talk about it very much. For some reason.

            • samus12345@lemmy.world
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              If they’re believers it’s because god is “good” no matter what he does or allows to happen.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    They keep claiming all these things against the TOS yet you can read that and none of it’s in there. I don’t know what it is about these mods but they sure seem to be trying to push their own agenda.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Remember how the [email protected] mods kept pushing for months the propaganda bot from a pro-Zionist and very rightwing (so much so that their definition of a Rightwing news media was pretty much only the Far-Right ones) organisation trying to tell everybody which news to trust and which to not trust?

      Also, curiously and back some months ago when I was making anti-Zionist posts in my Lemmy.world account, all of a sudden I started getting e-mails on the account I used to register on Lemmy.world from an Israeli organisation doing “Education about Israel” courses and they knew not just my e-mail but also the country I lived in (the e-mails were in my native language) even though I didn’t share my email on any posts.

    • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org
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      I was questioning a certain mod why they banned someone for TOS violations but left up the offending comments and they were confused why anyone would question them about it.

      Like if something is that bad you ban and remove it but they thought it was better to use as an example.

      Simply put they just use it as their go to excuse.

    • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      I’m as much of a god as anything or anyone else, and I hereby give you all permission to judge anyone you want for any reason. This applies both going forward in perpetuity, and retroactively until the Big Bang.

  • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I’m totally with the post here condemning this but I wish some people in this comment section would act neutrally.

    This is not a lemmy.world admin, who would actually speak on behalf of the whole instance (Not that those haven’t done questionable shit either, but not to this level). It’s a mod on community that happens to be hosted on lemmy.world, and they are citing the lemmy.world ToS in bad faith. Just like a corrupt cop will think of some bullshit law to arrest you if they wanted to abuse their power.

    I for one do hope they get removed as a mod from the community by the admins, but strangely I see very little of that being discussed. Instead there’s a bunch of prepossessed conclusions made about the users of lemmy.world, which shouldn’t be a surprise that the largest instance, isn’t a monolith, and people don’t join it for political affiliation unlike some instances. The fact the mod is at times not even receiving a single upvote should be clear that everyone is disgusted by this.

    Lemmy.world users need to see this thread and this corruption from a mod on our instance, so that we can pressure them into being removed. Since communities are there also for people outside of the instance, this is a net positive for the fediverse itself if they get kicked out.

    But this kind of circle jerking over how much you dislike lemmy.world, you’re drowing out the actually important information, and if the first thing someone sees when entering this thread is unfounded prejudice against them, they’re going to ignore it and think less of you for it in return, creating a more hostile space for everyone that has to share it. I hope everyone here that does this is aware of that self-sabotage.