I want to cover the concept of informed juries and jury nullification for these next two projects. Jury nullification is the idea that jurors are allowed to refuse to find a defendant guilty for a multitude of reasons: if they don’t agree with the law, believe the punishment(s) are too severe, if the defendant is being tried for political reasons, etc. The movement uses the fact that juries were created to protect citizens against the whims of monarchs or other executives as the basis of their efforts.
The audience for my persuasive essay would be members of the legal community-mainly lawyers and judges-in an effort to grow support for the informed jury movement inside the courts. Many prosecutors and judges suppress this information to potential jurors, and defendants or defense attorneys have been held in contempt of court for trying to fill those gaps. This means that juries are unable to protect their fellow citizens from unjust laws or aggressive prosecution over smaller crimes.
The advocacy part, however, would focus more on citizens like myself, to try and inform them of this right they have as potential jurors. One advocacy group, the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) has a website (www.fija.org) that I could get materials or ideas from to share with the public. If I’m feeling adventurous, maybe I’ll skip classes for a day and set up an informational session in the HUB, or something similar to that. Either way, I have a lot more interest in this movement since I turned 18, as I am eligible for jury duty.
I’ve never really thought about this, though since I too am 18 I guess I should know a little more about it. It would be so helpful for you to present something like this at the HUB to inform less-aware individuals like myself about it and show that it’s a problem BEFORE we eventually get put on jury duty.
I like how cohesive both of your ideas for your persuasion and advocacy project are, and I think they are both relevant, as you said since we are now able to be selected for juries. I think this will be a great topic to research and advocate for.
Awesome topic! The promotion of real justice! Can’t wait to see how your advocacy project pans out!
I think what Ren said is really relevant here, in that no one wants to be that guy who makes jury duty, something unfortunately viewed as a pain in the ass, to continue on longer than it has to, and this means acquitting someone whose guilty for this purpose, just to get it over with, or something like that. I don’t think people realize just how much power they wield in the process, and I think that’d be a great jumping off point for the advocacy project.
This is an interesting topic and really relevant to college students who have become recently eligible for jury duty. It is also a subject that not a lot of people know about. I think doing something at the Advocacy Fair is a really good idea because it would be a great way to get a great amount of students informed about this issue.
Looks like you have a solid base so far. You mentioned that you have a stake in the matter because of your recent eligibility to be a juror. I just want to point out that probably all of us are in that same situation. To participate in one of the country’s most important duty of the people, we need to know how everything works. I look forward to seeing how you approach this because I’m rather uneducated about the jury system as of now.
This is a really interesting concept that not a lot of people probably think about. There are so many people out there that believe that they are merely on a jury to sentence a criminal, and even if they believe that the defendant is innocent they do not want to be THAT person who makes the deliberation process even longer. I really applaud you for wanting to take on a legal paper, it’s a challenging bit o’ writing that I think you could pull off really well. As for the advocacy project, a booth would be really effective way to get people interested and involved (especially if you have free stuff… everyone wants free stuff).
This looks great, Kevin. You can present your advocacy piece at the Advocacy Fair the course is putting on April 18 & 19.