I have written many times before about the practice known as jury nullification, where juries exercise their right to acquit people of violating a law even if they are plainly guilty. Juries do not have to give any reason for their action but the reason juries do this is usually because they feel that the law is unjust or was applied arbitrarily and punitively or that the accused had justifiable reasons for their actions. It was because of juries refusing to convict despite the evidence and the law that we now have basic freedoms like freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and free exercise of religion. I would strongly recommend reading this post from 2007 where I discuss how important this right of juries is and its history.

There have been other cases recently (see here, here, here, and here) that suggest that grand juries are becoming reluctant to indict people who have been targeted by Trump’s ICE thugs and department of justice. This is significant because usually grand juries proceedings are heavily slanted in favor of the prosecutor and juries tend to go along with whatever they want. There is an old joke that because of the low standard of proof required in grand juries, any prosecutor should be able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

The fact that so many are refusing to do so is a good sign.

Recently there was another case that had the potential for jury nullification..

The facts at the center of the case were not in dispute. Just past midnight on 13 June 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) drove to Petaluma Poultry, a slaughterhouse about 40 miles (64km) north of San Francisco. Disguised as workers, they encountered a truck filled with thousands of live chickens packed into crates. They removed four chickens, placed them in buckets and drove away.

These facts were not in dispute because Rosenberg and her fellow activists had subsequently released video footage of what they had done. “It’s not a whodunit,” Rosenberg’s lawyer, Chris Carraway, likes to say. “It’s a whydunit.”

After leaving the slaughterhouse, the activists examined the chickens – whom they named Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea – more thoroughly. Rosenberg says they were splattered with diarrhea and suffering from wounds and abrasions.

Carraway would explain in court that Rosenberg’s intent was not to steal the birds, but to aid them. The jurors would be asked to determine, in effect, how far compassion can go before it becomes a crime.

In this case, to my disappointment, the jury found her guilty of trespass and conspiracy. But she and her lawyers are hoping that her case sheds light on these practices.

“Sonoma county spent over six weeks and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to protect a multibillion-dollar corporation from the rescue of four chickens worth less than $25,” Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s attorney, said in a statement.

Prosecutor sand judges try to keep from juries knowledge of their right to nullify unjust laws, judges because they feel that it is their right to determine the validity of laws, prosecutors because they do not want to give the defense another way to acquit their clients. This is why making this right more widely known is so important.

Similar cases by animal rights activists have gone to trial with better results.

[T]he group’s signature move has been “open rescues”. From the activists’ perspective, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an injustice – it attempts, in a small way, to correct it. It also targets the industry rather than implicating individual consumers, and offers a glimpse into the hidden world of animal agriculture.

“The court cases that we have are kind of a vehicle to pose the question to a randomly selected jury of our peers, and to others through the media,” said Cassie King, DxE’s communications lead. “Is it a crime, or is it the right thing to do, to rescue an animal who’s dying in a factory farm?”

Already, DxE activists note, there are “right to rescue” laws in California and 13 other states granting people criminal and civil protection if they forcibly enter a motor vehicle to remove an endangered animal. Their argument is that the same principle should apply to all animals in distress.
…

Wayne Hsiung, a DxE founder, was later convicted of trespassing and felony conspiracy for his role in the protests at Weber’s farm and found guilty of trespassing on a duck farm in Sonoma county. He was sentenced to 90 days in county jail and served about half that time.

Even so, Hsiung and other activists have won a series of unexpected victories: in two of the cases mentioned above, juries acquitted the defendants.

In October 2022, Hsiung and Paul Darwin Picklesimer were found not guilty of burglary and theft for removing the two piglets from the Utah farm. And in March 2023, two activists – one of whom was Baywatch actor Alexandra Paul – were acquitted of all charges after removing two chickens from the truck in Merced, California.

In both cases, the defense argued that the goal was not to steal property but to rescue animals that were sick and suffering. Veterinarians testified about the ill health of the animals. Another key point was that because of their condition, the animals had no monetary value to the companies – if anything, they were a financial liability.

The activists were defended by attorneys at the animal law program at the University of Denver, founded in 2021 by law professor Justin Marceau to bring legal savvy to the fight for animal rights. (Carraway, Rosenberg’s lawyer, is associated with this clinic.)

These acquittals were “pretty earth-shattering”, said Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, a Canadian legal advocacy organization. “To me what it represented was the power of being able to tell people the stories of what animals endure, tell the personal stories of the rescuers.” She added that it reflected “a real triumph of the ability of people to put aside their preconceived beliefs” and “a real triumph of logic and reason”.

Let’s hope more people who might be called upon to serve on juries become aware of their right to nullify.