OH YEAH THEYRE TALKING ABOUT IT NOW
Please do not remove mods, really sorry for the Google AMP link, but this is a “subscribers only” blocked article on CNN that for some reason AMP just straight up bypasses and opens fine.
Direct link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/10/us/jury-nullification-luigi-mangione-defense/index.html.
Edit 1: updated title, CNN changed it on me
Jury nullification is an important logical conclusion of American jurist rules. This post will stay up.
It’s literally the reason to have juries. It’s the last line of defense against unjust laws.
https://lemmy.world/comment/14404101
A very important explanation
Thank you, Based Mod. Not every day, we see one.
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Let’s not forget, maybe, just maybe, this guy is absolutely innocent, was nowhere near the crime at the time, and had nothing to do with it.
And the cops, in their over zeal to catch someone, anyone, found a poor unlucky person who looks like the guy in the crime scene photos and handily fabricated the rest of the physical evidence. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
Seriously, a written statement admitting guilt? How likely is that? Anyway, this is what I think is happening. And I doubt the real truth will ever be known, sadly.
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All the other crimes didn’t involve the owner class.
Or a judge’s weed wacker.
“He’s bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated.
In this he was echoing the Patrician’s view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.”
I was talking about this the other day. I hope he has an airtight alibi to just rub in all of their faces.
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What really moved me to the camp that “Luigi might actually be innocent” was what Luigi said in perhaps his only public statement after being arrested. His lawyer has wisely since told him to shut up, but he did make one shouted public statement to the cameras.
He shouted, “this is extremely out of touch; this is an insult to the intelligence of the American people!”
To me, that doesn’t really sound like the proclamation of a John Brown-type figure. Here’s what John Brown’s words were.
Luigi supposedly planned this elaborate killing down to a T. He even wrote his message on the shell casings. And he wrote a hand-written manifesto. Yet in his one chance so far to speak to the media, did he say, “I apologize for nothing!” Did he say, “Robert Thompson murdered thousands of people; I just brought him justice!” Did he say anything of the sort? Do his words sound like those of a revolutionary, boldly willing to die for his cause?
No. He sounds like a scared kid, caught in over his head, who knows he his being framed and facing potential capital punishment for a crime he didn’t commit. That is how I would sound if I were being charged for those murders. I would probably be shouting something very similar if I were currently being framed for some high-profile murder. It would be an insult to the intelligence of the American people, and I would be rightfully scared and infuriated.
Now, it’s certainly possible that this whole thing was an act. Maybe Luigi just planned that statement to garner public sympathy. IDK. But at least in terms of publicly observable demeanor, he really doesn’t seem like some wild-eyed revolutionary. He seems like a scared kid who knows he’s being framed.
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But just think of all the Luigi memes that would need to be replaced
I mean, if he actually were convicted, executed, and later proved innocent…
That is one of the few circumstances that an official “Saint Luigi” could literally happen. Despite the memes, it is an understatement to say that it is extremely unlikely that the Catholic church would ever beatify someone for shooting someone else in the back with a silenced pistol. But to be falsely convicted and executed for the crime? That would make Luigi a completely innocent martyr for the cause of the sick and injured. That’s the stuff sainthood is made of.
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Jury nullification is the term for when a jury declines to convict a defendant despite overwhelming evidence of guilt. This can be a form of civil disobedience, a political statement against a specific law, or a show of empathy and support to the defendant.
“It’s not a legal defense sanctioned under the law,” said Cheryl Bader, associate professor of law at Fordham School of Law. “It’s a reaction by the jury to a legal result that they feel would be so unjust or morally wrong that they refuse to impose it, despite what the law says.”
Over the centuries, American juries have nullified cases related to controversial topics like fugitive slave laws, Prohibition and, in recent decades, the war on drugs.
Giggity.
Jury nullification is also why cops who murder people and klansmen get acquitted. It’s not necessarily a good thing, just a quirk of the system.
Oh it’s definitely a good thing. But sometimes people are bigots. Fortunately most people dont want to let Klansman get aquited.
As much as most people on the left want juries to nullify in cases of unfair or unjust laws, the reality is it mostly results in murderous cops going free and corporations getting free passes. Like I said in another comment, while jury nullification could be used to tackle unfair laws, the reality is you mostly end up with actual racists and actively harmful corporations not being held accountable. Jury nullification is itself not good or bad, but it’s mostly used for bad. Frankly, I don’t really love the jury system but that’s a while bigger issue.
Most people wouldn’t support a muderois cop. The reason cops go free is because most of them never see a jury trial. They dont even get indicted.
It’s not some minor quirk of the system. It’s the only reason we have juries at all. If you just wanted a group of 12 people to decide guilt and innocence based on the facts of the case and the letter of the law, you would never hire 12 random untrained nobodies for that purpose. If that is all juries were for, you would have professional juries; being a juror would be a career that required a law degree.
We have juries to protect against corrupt laws. That is the only saving grace of having guilt and innocence be decided by 12 random untrained nobodies. Legislatures can become corrupted and end up criminalizing things that the vast majority of the population does not consider to be wrong. A jury of your peers is the last line of defense against corrupt laws. And this mechanism is the only reason we have juries like we do.
No, juries are the triers of fact. Juries do not exist to make a determination as to whether the law is fair or not and are (usually) explicitly told this. They have to listen to the facts, decide what actually happened, and then whether the facts match the elements of whatever crime is being charged.
I agree that getting a jury of twelve randomish peers is actually not the greatest system, but it’s what we’re working with. So in this paradigm, jury nullification is a huge problem because it’s twelve random people just deciding not to enforce a law the rest of society (sort of) has said needs to be enforced. This in turn leads to white supremacists getting acquitted by juries after prosecutors proved beyond a doubt that the defendants committed the crime and the same happening with police that abuse their powers.
It could end up working to protect civil liberties. But the reality is it mostly results in the status quo being upheld and/or actual criminals that need some kind of punishment being acquitted.
This is a self-serving lie promulgated by legislators and jurists who loathe a check on their own power.
Form follows function. The jury nullification “loophole” has been known for centuries. Entire constitutions have been written knowing full well that they will enable jury nullification. There are ways you could design a legal system that wouldn’t allow nullification. Yet time and time again, the people have chosen not to reform the system to eliminate jury nullification.
Yes, giving juries power to judge the law often produces negative outcomes. But that’s simply democracy. Sometimes democracies produce bad outcomes, just like any system of government.
“This is not a case of (Mangione) like throwing blood on this guy as he’s walking into the convention,” Bader said, referring to the scene of the shooting outside an investors’ conference in Midtown Manhattan. “If the jury finds that there’s evidence that he ended this man’s life in cold blood, I don’t see the result being an acquittal because of anger toward the health insurance system.”
Dumbass
I don’t see the result being acquittal because of the anger toward the health insurance system.
Feels like Mr. Bader himself might be a little out of touch with just how bad the health insurance system is.
Its hard for rich people to understand. I have no sympathy for their predicament
Repost of my own comment in a different community:
I would say that jury nullification isn’t just some accident of the legal system, but the primary reason we have juries in the first place.
Judges will say that juries are meant to just decide the simple facts of the case. But what sane person would ever design a system that assigns 12 random untrained nobodies to do that task? If all that mattered was judging the facts of the case, why not have 12 legal scholars instead? Why isn’t “juror” a profession, just like being a lawyer or judge is? If we want people to just apply the letter of the law to the facts of a case, why not fill juries with professionals, each who had a legal degree, and who have sat as jurors hundreds of times? Judging evidence and reading law is a skill. And it’s one that can be educated on, trained, and practiced. Why do we have amateur juries, when professional juries would clearly do their purported job so much better? Or why not just do what some countries do, and have most or all trials decided solely by judges? What exactly is the point of a jury? Compared to everything else in the courtroom, the jurors, the ones actually deciding guilt or innocence, are a bunch of untrained amateurs. On its face, it makes no damn sense!
No, the true reason, and really the only reason, we have juries at all is so that juries can serve to judge both the accused AND the law. Juries are meant to be the final line of defense against unjust laws and prosecution. It is possible for a law itself to be criminal or corrupt. Legislative systems can easily be taken over by a tiny wealthy or powerful minority of the population, and they can end up passing laws criminalizing behaviors that the vast majority of the population don’t even consider to be crimes.
The entire purpose of having a jury is that it places the final power of guilt and innocence directly in the hands of the people. Juries are meant as a final line of defense against corrupt laws passed by a minority against the wishes of the greater majority. An unaccountable elite can pass whatever ridiculous self-serving laws they want. But if the common people simply refuse to uphold those laws in the jury box, those laws are meaningless.
THAT is the purpose of a jury. It is the only reason juries are worth the trouble. A bunch of rank amateurs will never be able to judge the facts of a case better than actual trained legal scholars with years of experience. But by empowering juries, it places the final authority of the law firmly in the hands of the people. That is the value of having a jury at all.
Jury nullification is not just some strange quirk or odd loophole in our justice system. It’s the entire reason we have juries in the first place.
Also a guard against corruption. It’s much harder to keep bribing random jurors than getting and keeping “Jurors” that you can control. See the US Supreme Court as a cautionary tale.
It’s also because jurors are asked to judge the probability of something happening, not just whether it happened, so it’s not something that you can leave to professionals because judging motive etc requires a representative sample of the population and not some remote legal class of citizens.
Juries also have acquitted some abused women who killed or attacked their husbands, such as Francine Hughes, leading to a wider recognition of what’s known as battered woman syndrome.
“Juries recognized that before the law did,” Conrad said. “The law is slow to change. Sometimes society changes much more quickly than the law, and that is when jury nullification should come in … We don’t need to have 18th-century law governing 21st-century behavior, and the jury can say so.”
New phrase added to the American lexicon in 2025 - battered patient syndrome.
Hmm, maybe convict him, but give him no penalty and no imprisonment?
That’s a thing, right?
Is if you’re Trump
Yeah, I think that happened to some really important guy a few days back.
I think the judge decides the penalty after the jury decides on guilt.
I believe the jury decides guilt or innocence, but the judge determines the sentence… In most cases
It depends on the state. Some states have a full second trial with a new jury in order to determine the sentencing.
Sometimes it’s just a tacked on part of the original verdict.
And the rest of the time it’s just the Judge who can do almost anything provided the sentence stays within certain parameters.
Yep that’s how that works
Pardon?
**Hmm, maybe convict him, but give him no penalty and no imprisonment?
That’s a thing, right?**
Idk, but I hope so!
That’s was probably a dad joke. And maybe you missed it on purpose but will point it out anyway.
Only if you’re rich
Jury nullification doesn’t really exist. It’s just an attempt to label something the jury decides that you believe goes against the law. The fact is, the jury is part of the law, and the jury can decide what parts of it are relevant, are enforceable in the case, and which need special considerations. Complaining about “jury nullification” is complaining about one of the fewest democratic elements in the judicial system, a system that on its own is almost completely autocratic and as such that much more susceptible to the formation of oligarchies and nepotism from within.
It’s actually the conclusion of 2 things:
- Double Jeopardy means your cannot try someone twice for the same crime
- A juror cannot be held accountable for a decision they make
If both hold true, then logically, a jury can make a decision against legal precedent, without fear of repercussion - unless they are paid/coerced to come to that conclusion, and the defendant - once cleared by by a jury - cannot be tried again.
This means that legally, a jury can say GTFO to jury instructions set by judges.
This means that legally, a jury can say GTFO to jury instructions set by judges.
Only when it comes to acquittals though, which aren’t appealable. Those decisions can and will be reversed in civil cases or if people convict inappropriately. You mentioned as much by noting double Jeopardy but I still think it’s an important distinction that makes it irregular.
Please, please, god don’t put me on the jury. I would hate to hold a murderer accountable for getting in the way of an innocent man’s bullets.
I’ve been on a jury in the last little place I lived and you better believe they made sure it was all employed older white people against a young black man. I was the youngest on at 28. What they did to me is made me sit in a room with these, some probably decent, people, while one guy just talked and talked and lied and told fake stories like long discredited shit while a bunch were like oh yeah and I remember.
Fucking makes me sick. Sick at myself that I was such a little shit at that age that I didn’t tell the old prick to shut the fuck up and stop lying. But what really makes me sick was after sitting in a room for hours with these people is the state’s house slave walks in with cops and says we just walked the guy by, showed him who was going to convict him, and he took the plea deal. Fucking gross. Don’t believe your fucking TV this is how most cases go.
Why the hell is CNN charging a subscription now? Are people really stupid enough to pay it?
do you prefer ads?
I prefer quality journalism, not paying for the shit CNN generally churns out. Are you really suggesting it’s worth paying for CNN? We’re not exactly talking about Deutsche Welle here in terms of journalistic integrity and serious reporting just because they have the occasional decent article.
I think it’s a reasonable response to the ‘why the hell they’re charging a subscription now’ part of your question. Probably not a question you actually wanted an answer to, but regardless of opinions about the quality of their journalism I think it’s important that publishers are investigating alternate ways to monetize their work — publishers want to rely on ads for revenue about as much as readers want to see them. A fragmented subscription model across the whole industry being the right answer seems doubtful, but at least it gives them a revenue stream which doesn’t come with advertiser strings attached. And who knows, maybe it will positively change the content they put out if they garner enough subscribers with high enough expectations to pay.
CNN still has ads.
Yes, because they can be blocked.
Keeping in mind that I am not debating the merits of CNN specifically — unfortunately in a reality where there are no subscription or similar means to pay for professional journalism, and everyone is blocking ads, these services die. Both the ones you approve of, and the ones you don’t.
Which then results in sites charging money for subscriptions…
Press the button that makes all that stuff go away so you can just read the article…
Works fine on my machine
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I am going to cross fingers for it, but wouldn’t the state just resue in a higher court?
I really don’t think that even a dem controlled supreme court would allow it, but a republican one? We will be lucky if Luigi isn’t yahoo-ed
It’s not a law suit. It’s a criminal trial. The principal of double jeopardy says that an acquittal by a jury is final. The defendant can’t be charged over the same crime again. They go free and clear.
Which is why it’s a little crazy that they’re hitting him with both 1st degree murder and 2nd degree murder in one go. If he goes free, wouldn’t this mean they couldn’t try charging him under 1st or 2nd?
He’s got parallel New York state and federal charges going at the same time. Under double jeopardy rules, those are two separate cases, and if he wins one, he can still lose the other.
On the state case, at least, both 1st and second degree are charged. The jury doesn’t decide on 2nd degree unless and until they decide not guilty on 1st degree. The process is:
- Decide 1st degree charge.
- if not guilty on 1st, consider and decide on 2nd degree.
- is not guilty on 2nd degree, consider manslaughter or anything else on the charge sheet…
- etc.
All of that happens after one trial, and it’s all in one deliberation session. If the jury gets through all of that with a not guilty on everything, then the state can’t try again, and they can’t appeal.
Note: I don’t think we have a whole lot of evidence saying that the elite in this case will abide by double jeopardy laws anyway.
Since we’re already in a time where there are two justice systems, there’s nothing to say they can’t charge him in the Court Above and make it legal.
We have watched a man get off completely free and become president despite felonies and breaking the law. What’s to say the court needs to follow that law too?
I really think the elite have no idea how much fire they are playing with here, and we’re about to see it go down, one way or the other. We are in an era of no winners.
Hell, not just felonies, but inciting insurrection, which makes him ineligible to be president again… The fact that that’s being ignored says it all, I have no faith they’ll honor double jeopardy laws with someone like Luigi who they have such a massive hard-on to get
But even if they do let a not guilty stand, I’m sure Thompson’s family will sue him into the ground
He’s got parallel New York state and federal charges going at the same time. Under double jeopardy rules, those are two separate cases, and if he wins one, he can still lose the other.
And if he is acquitted on both, perhaps they will invent “continental murder”, “planetary murder” or “solar system murder”. Or he just takes his own life while in prison, that is something that happens.
Ok this one needs explaining to me as a non American isn’t there different criteria for 1st and second degree?
The charges for murder vary by State. Here’s a New York lawyer explaining Murder 1 vs Murder 2 as it relates to New York State law. Murder 2 is regular premeditated murder. Murder 1 is murder with the intent of influencing or intimidating government ie. Terrorism. The lawyer in this interview suggests the Terrorism charge is, ironically, politically motivated, but it will be difficult to actually prove beyond a doubt that Luigi’s intentions were to change government policies and not just get even with someone he disliked.
In most places murder 1 is premeditated murder and murder 2 is manslaughter. Murder 1 in New York is different.
Wow never heard of m1 being used as terrorism thank you
The jury makes a decision on both separately.
Charging with both gives the jury 2 options. If they don’t think it was premeditated and planned enough to convict on 1st degree, they can choose to convict on 2nd degree instead.If the prosecution only charged him with 1st degree, the jury wouldn’t have any other option. And if acquitted on 1st, he couldn’t be tried again under 2nd degree.
So time/money saving excersize? Don’t get 1st saves doing the whole circus again for 2nd
Thanks
Wouldn’t the state have to present its case for each charge? Like wouldn’t presenting evidence and testimony to show its murder 1 undermine a murder 2 charge?
Typically the higher grades of the same charge incorporate all the elements of the grade below and then some. So if you can prove 1st degree to the jury, 2nd degree is a given.
Sometimes it is the case that different counts need to be proven individually.
In Trumps bribery case, they had to prove 34 instances of falsifying documents. “This is how this individual document was falsified.” x34 times.
wouldn’t the state just resue in a higher court?
No, because the constitution prohibits double jeopardy.
Pls correct me, but you can challenge a ruling for mistrials, can’t you?
And the higher court decides the legitimacy of the prev ruling, right?
Jury nullification means acquittal, and you cannot retry someone after acquittal.
Also prosecutors generally cannot appeal an acquittal.
Non-lawyer but…
If a jury comes to a conclusion then the defendant is not guilty then it’s game over. A mistrial had to be called before deliberation happen, and that would have to have some material misconduct during the trial, not just ‘I think we gonna lose’. A guilty verdict could be appealed but that appeal is only to decide if the case was conducted fairly (for a retrial request) or to assess the validity of a sentence.
Basing it off some time I did a lot of legal/court adjacent work for a few years, but I’m pretty sure that’s right.
Assuming the trial results in a hung jury the state can refile the case over and over again - but if the outcome isn’t viewed as a fluke then it’s just a huge waste of money.
To clarify a hung jury and jury nullification are different things. The most likely outcome is probably a hung jury and I’d rate a non-guilty declaration as more likely than a guilty declaration.
Assuming the trial results in a hung jury the state can refile the case over and over again - but if the outcome isn’t viewed as a fluke then it’s just a huge waste of money.
I’ll elaborate on this. In order to actually be acquitted, ie found not guilty, the jury has to unanimously vote him “not guilty.” A hung jury is if that jury cannot come to a unanimous decision.
In a case like this, if we get a hung jury, the prosecution isn’t likely to let it go. It’s too high profile of a case. What tends to happen in cases this high profile is that the prosecution tries again, but with a lesser set of charges.
So here they’re trying murder one. If that results in a hung jury for all the charges, then they will try again. Next time, they charge him with murder two. If that results in a hung jury, they’ll charge him with manslaughter.
Eventually, the charges they’re considering get low enough that the defendant will likely just take a plea deal for a lesser charge. Maybe Luigi takes a plea deal for 2nd degree manslaughter, or whatever the equivalent is in NY. At that point he would likely already have been in prison for years, and he might just be let off with time served.
I don’t know how likely that scenario is, but that’s what would probably happen if his trials just kept resulting in hung juries. Prosecutors rarely try defendants on the exact same set of charges. If they got a hung jury, they know they were probably over-reaching on the previous set. So each time they dial it back and hope to get the guy on something.
Mistrials and appeals only work for a guilty verdict. They aren’t an option for a not guilty verdict.
Honestly, I’m amazed Luigi hasn’t had an “accident” in jail
Not sure if you refer to this accident, but Jeffrey knew too much and was a risk. Luigi is not a risk anymore, his followers are. And they would probably be fueled by his death.
Yeah; he’s already become evangelised to an absolutely insane degree globally that the ruling class didn’t see coming, making any rash moves, especially any that would martydom him, would backfire.
Saint Mangione! The patron saint of medical benefits.
Nah, that would make a martyr. If anything he’s the safest guy in the place.
Really hope this is fully televised.
Nah, the topic of the month is going to be Trump declaring war on Mongolia because UFOs and Jewish Space Lasers.
Can’t have the plebs talking about real issues.
the whole point of a jury is to allow the people to decide the law on individual cases. There are many problems with juries, but complaining about jury nullification just means you don’t like the good parts of having a jury.
There are good parts and bad parts to it. Historically, it was used for good in the form of letting slaves go free. It was also historically used to let lynch mobs go free, which is horrifying.
It’s not 100% good, nor is it 100% bad.
It’s just another part of democracy. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.”
Any form of government can produce positive and negative outcomes. Even absolute monarchy had its moments. Once in a very blue moon, you would actually get a “good” king or tyrant, one that really did try to use his power and influence for the greater good. But through trial and error we learned that, on average, democratic systems produce far better outcomes than monarchical or dictatorial ones. No system of government has entirely positive outcomes; they just vary in their ratio of positive to negative.
Agreed, 100%. Democratic juries are absolutely better.
I was mostly addressing this part:
complaining about jury nullification just means you don’t like the good parts of having a jury.
There are some valid cases to complain about it. But the majority of the time, it’s a good thing.
