Start with the practical version. If you want out of jury duty, tell them during questioning that you think jury nullification is important. Bill Norton guarantees the lawyers and the judge will not want you in that box. Which tells you something about how much weight the thing actually carries.
Thomas Jefferson called the jury one of the most brilliant inventions of man. Norton points out what is strange about that: the right to a jury is not a natural, unalienable right the way life or self preservation is. It is a human invention. The founders thought it was such a good one that they wrote it into the Bill of Rights and treated it like natural law anyway.
Then the history. Juries started centuries ago as investigators, sent out to walk a disputed property line and come back with the facts. That got impractical, so sheriffs did the investigating and reported to the jury instead. And when juries moved from settling boundary disputes to hearing criminal cases, people discovered what a jury could really do.
The set piece is the trial of William Penn, the same William Penn who founded Pennsylvania. He was arrested for preaching on the street, which was illegal because he was not a member of the right church. He never denied preaching. He denied needing permission. The jury came back not guilty. The judge told them to read it again. Not guilty. He sent them back to deliberate. Not guilty. He sequestered them, then cut off their food, then their sleep, then the restroom. Not guilty. And the people watching understood something permanent: the jury can be the last protection against tyranny.
Which is the answer to the question. A jury that knows a defendant broke the law can still acquit if it thinks the law is wrong or wrongly applied. Judges and lawyers can tell you nullification is not a thing, and a jury can return not guilty for any reason at all. A judge can overturn a guilty verdict. A judge cannot overturn an acquittal. So it exists whether anyone wants to say the words or not.
One limit worth knowing: nullification only reaches that one case. The law survives, and the next defendant can be convicted under it the very next day.
Get the full four-lesson training at teapartypatriots.org/1776. Watch the full conversation at jennybethshow.com.
00:00 — How to Get Out of Jury Duty
00:27 — Jefferson: One of the Most Brilliant Inventions of Man
00:45 — A Right the Founders Made, Not One They Found
01:22 — The Jury Began as an Investigative Body
02:27 — When Juries Started Hearing Crimes
03:04 — The Trial of William Penn
03:38 — Guilty of Preaching, and They Admitted It
03:53 — Not Guilty. Read It Again.
04:19 — No Food, No Sleep, No Restroom
04:48 — The Jury as the Final Protection Against Tyranny
05:21 — The People Have the Final Say on the Law
05:58 — A Judge Cannot Overturn an Acquittal
06:41 — Nullification Applies to One Case Only
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