Jury Nullification and Democracy

Guest: Ilya Somin, Professor of Law, George Mason University Most states require a jury to come to a unanimous decision in order to convict someone of a serious crime. There’s a long-delayed correction to Louisiana’s old racially driven jury law. There is little-known power that juries hold. What would you do if you were sitting on a jury and you felt strongly that the law itself was unjust – or that the punishment was too severe? It turns out juries have a solution in their toolkit. It’s called jury nullification – which simply means that a jury can return a “not guilty” verdict if they object to the law itself or to the severity of the likely sentence.