Hardly; not any more than the President’s veto constitutes an “end-run” around Congress. Jury nullification is a planned, intentional feature of having trials judged by 12 human beings instead of 12 lawbooks. It’s the check the community places on the legislative power of distant entities.

Serafina, jury nullification is not a neutral tool, like protest or campaigning.

I don’t think protest or campaigning is neutral. I do think it’s indirect, and often ineffective, but that doesn’t make it neutral.

It’s an individual’s decision that their opinion trumps our entire civic process of enacting laws.

Well, sometimes it does, depending on what the opinion is and what the civic process is and what the law is. And if someone votes to convict a drug addict, they’re putting their opinion that the Law is the overriding consideration over the drug addict’s freedom, sanity, health and possibly life. It always does come down to your opinion–there’s no way of getting out of that responsibility.

All you’re saying is that the end justifies the means, again, but it’s for your conscience so that makes it pretty.

The ends sometimes do justify the means. Acting outside the law for conscience is sometimes necessary, as no one has really denied on this thread. Does this mean I have to be okay with pro-lifers nullifying verdicts of abortion terrorists? No, because I disagree with their ends. It’s not their means that bug me. It’s perfectly valid to condemn or criticize people because of their ends. Their means are not the only legitimate targets of criticism.

But having endorsed such an action, you don’t have the option of saying it is “wrong” when other people do it simply because you find the moral reasoning motivating them unappealing. You have subordinated the legitimacy of the law to your personal morality, and can’t complain when others do the same.

Sure I can, if I disagree with their “personal morality.” I can’t criticize their decision to subordinate the law to morality, but I certainly can criticize and complain about what that morality is. Your argument assumes that what you call “ethics” is the only legitimate subject for criticism, while what you call “morality” is purely a matter of personal taste and can’t be criticized. I don’t see why that should be so: it goes back to what I said above about criticizing ends as well as means.

There are lots of times when I’m fine with people’s means but can’t stand their ends: when right-wingers boycott Brokeback Mountain, for instance, or when they protest outside abortion clinics. I don’t see that it’s hypocritical for me to criticize those protesters–so long as I’m careful to criticize their goals and not just the mere fact that they’re protesting. In the same way, I don’t see why I shouldn’t condemn a jury that lets a lyncher off: not because they practiced jury nullification, but because of why they did it and the sort of goals and the sort of society they just upheld.

So we’re suppose to do nothing until we have the perfect social policy (around drugs) or some utopian economy. I’m not going for that logic nor are the vast majority of Americans.

Chicago, NYC and LA are having 35-40 year lows in the rate of homicide. I’ll take a guess that arresting street drug dealers has been part of their strategy to reduce violence. While arresting large numbers of people for drug offenses may not be an enlightened criminal policy, to say it has no effect on lowering crime rates is false.

Note: I have no moral objection to drug use and I’m for legalization. But in the meantime until that happens I’m not willing to turn the neighborhood over to dealers and addicts. Locally I’ll be supporting political candidates who are going to be aggressive about street violence, which is has become by far the top city wide issue here in Oakland.

Also, I’m 100% unconvinced that using jury nullification to help spring just one person that’s facing unjust punishment for an unjust drug law will somehow help the anti-choice cause. I actually believe those people don’t give a shit about what I do.

Meanwhile, I can’t in my heart say that the vast majority of people I know—since the vast majority of people dip into an illegal substance at some point in their lives—should cool it in jail and have their entire lives ruined for it, lest we send the wrong signal about the importance of enforcing every law, no matter how stupid. Nor do I think, when abortion is a crime again, that women and doctors should go to jail. I promise, that would that day come, I’d nullify on those juries as well.

Will you vote guilty against women and doctors when abortion is a crime again?

The abortion example also shows that jury nullification is not mutually exclusive from lobbying and protest.

Define “a real crime”. That might go a long way to claryifying the, well, not disagreement but uneasiness we have with the idea of jury nullification.

The bottom line is that jury nullification is an end-run around our system of enacting laws and our system of testing laws for Constitutionality. Any one person willing to decide for themselves what the law should be can negate the laws as enacted by a majority of everybody else by refusing to convict a person accused of breaking those laws.

Think of how many more people you could save from unjust prosecution by actually engaging in political action to end the war on drugs. “Well offer me a candidate and I’ll vote for her, oh well I don’t see one”–Jesus, Amanda, you wouldn’t put up with that for a second as an excuse for supporting reproductive justice or human rights.

Serafina, jury nullification is not a neutral tool, like protest or campaigning. It’s an individual’s decision that their opinion trumps our entire civic process of enacting laws. All you’re saying is that the end justifies the means, again, but it’s for your conscience so that makes it pretty.

Not on my conscience, if I can help it.

Please point me to the politician running on a platform of decriminalizing drugs who is not a black helicopter spotting maniac and I will vote for her.

My bad. I forgot that it is absolutely, 100% impossible to lobby politicians to get them to vote differently. It is equally impossible to band together with like-minded citizens to change the laws. And you know that politicans and drug laws are enforced exactly the same everywhere in America, and every single politician is gung-ho in favor of the war on drugs. Plus, we know from experience that there is absolutely no way for a determined group of people to create change. The law is what it is and why fucking bother doing a thing about it? Better to let people be harassed, arrested and put on trial. We’ll wait until we get called up for jury service to lift a finger.