The Myth of the Nullifying Jury

The nullifying jury does so by failing to apply the law uniformly as the legislature intended and by carving out an exception for the particular defendant that the legislature may not have intended. The nullifying jury, consisting of only twelve jurors, rejects the view of the majority of the legislature, which in turn, represents the will of the people. The nullifying jury does this by declining to apply the law in a particular case. A nullifying jury only masks the defective law by attempting to fix it on an ad hoc basis when what is required is a uniform correction. The benefit of a jury nullifying in this situation is that its messages may be related to the criminal justice system and so the jury might be the best vehicle for conveying such messages. The jury is an institution under threat, and the form that the threat has taken most recently is an attack on jury nullification.