Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "State High Court Tosses Conviction of Man Whose Silence Was Used at Trial" video.

The problem is that the jury is only allowed to use the law that the judge gives them. The sole role of the jury is to weigh the evidence and see if the prosecution/plaintiff has made its case. If they did decide to vote not guilty, then this wouldn't have gotten to the appellate court and ultimately the highest court in the state. Now, there is precedence that other attorneys can use if the situation happens again. If juries nullify the charges, then it's whack-a-mole where every jury has to nullify it or people wind up going to prison over blatantly unconstitutional things. It sucks for those that are wrongfully convicted and have to hope that it gets fixed on appeal, but there isn't really a better way of addressing these things.
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@HomeDefender30 It has, it doesn't make him any less of a horrible human being. He went there looking for trouble, he found it, now there are two people who are dead at his hands. The fact that he's not legally a murderer doesn't make him any less of a horrible human being. And it only means that he's not a murderer because the term has a legal definition. If you heard the facts and didn't know the verdict, I don't know that it would be such a clear cut case of not being a murderer.
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IANAL, but I'd go so far as to suggest that it's probably best not to answer the question about whether or not you understand the rights they just told you. Saying you did and finding out later that you didn't because there are words in there that mean something in a specific legal sense could become an issue in some cases. Not to mention that the cops are allowed to lie and I wouldn't trust them to accurately explain the rights anyways.
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But, wouldn't have yelling, shouting and making a scene potentially have led to other charges related to resisting arrest and disorderly conduct? This is what we get when a bunch of law and order people get into positions they shouldn't be in. It's hard to have much respect for the legal system when this level of incompetence exists there. I hope that this is a minority of those involved, but it sucks if you get railroaded like this. I hope he gets a massive award in whatever upcoming wrongful arrest and prosecution suits are filed.
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@admthrawnuru No, it's not at all. The cases which would be nullified would be the ones that are most likely to result in new precedent being set. The best practice is to faithfully discharge the duties that come of being a juror and let the attorneys figure things out. When I was on jury duty, there was a lot of information that we weren't given for one reason or another. We would regularly be sent back to our room while the judge and attorneys would confer about what was going on and whether or not something was going to be allowed. As a result, you really can't say as a juror in most cases if nullification is appropriate, as you just have the evidence that was admitted and perhaps some things that were stricken from the record for violating the rules.
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@tanucci733 You can, but purely because jurors get some degree of secrecy in how they go about deliberations. It's not a feature of the system and would break things pretty badly if attorneys were allowed to just come up with emotional reasons to convince the jurors to ignore the law. The system isn't perfect, but there's already enough racism in the system in terms of how defendants and victims are viewed without adding any more opportunities. We had that, it was absolutely horrific and allowed thousands of murderers to escape conviction. This was particularly common throughout much of the South where lynchings were common and rarely even brought to trial because jurors wouldn't convict.
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