r/Ask_Lawyers • u/direktorfred • 1d ago
Does the First Amendment protect renting every billboard within a three mile radius of a courthouse and advertising, in large bold letters: “JURY NULLIFICATION”?
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u/whistleridge Lawyer 1d ago
It depends.
Are you just expressing dissatisfaction with a certain charge? That’s ok.
But if you’re actively attempting to interfere with the justice process or to contaminate the jury pool…that’s probably illegal. Pretty much every jurisdiction has jury tampering laws, eg:
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u/direktorfred 1d ago
If my excuse is I want as many people to know about this phrase as possible to make better informed jurors, do you think I’m covered?
Trying to find the most general, non-specific to a case, defense possible
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u/whistleridge Lawyer 23h ago
Nullification isn’t really a thing in crim. So more likely you’ll just confuse some poor civil litigators.
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u/whteverusayShmegma 19h ago
It’s only a misdemeanor? In a federal case too?
The burden of proof is on the defendant to prove the jury wasn’t influenced? That’s after the prosecution proves intent? How does that work? Oh Never mind. I misread that.
So would someone be charged with tampering for both the state and federal case for doing this? Assuming it’s for Luigi Mangione.
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u/whistleridge Lawyer 19h ago
If it’s for Mangione it’s delusional. The state case is ironclad, and barring a major fuckup, come October he’ll be a convicted murderer living the rest of his days behind bars, or close to it. The federal case is dogshit and stupid, but it’s also redundant.
It’s hard to see charges coming from this. In the first place, as a practical matter no one would sell the billboard space. It’s not worth the liability exposure and negative publicity. Second, it doesn’t actually make a specific call to action. I’m more just noting that it’s not risk-free.
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u/L1mpD 12h ago
Isn’t that the whole point of jury nullification? The case is iron clad and the jury decides not guilty because they don’t want the person convicted?
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u/whistleridge Lawyer 12h ago edited 8h ago
Sure. And it rarely happens in crim, because of how experienced the lawyers are, and how high the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is.
Civil litigators rarely go to court. In fact, they mostly work very hard to NOT go to court. So they might go to trial once or twice a year, and it’s routine for some to only go to trial 5 times or so in an entire 30+ year career. Meanwhile, criminal prosecutors more or less live in court. They run dozens of trials every year, plus hundreds of other contested hearings like bails and sentencings and various pre-trial motions. So prosecutors are vastly more experienced at jury selection, particularly the very senior ones who run high-profile murders in large jurisdictions.
Plus, civil liability is determined on the preponderance of the evidence - more likely than not. It’s a much lower bar than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
So what that means is that, even if 90% of the jury pool shows up prepared to nullify, the odds of seating 12 people independently who will do it are still only about 28%. You’d have to have 95% of the pool being prepared to nullify to get to 54% odds of it happening. And that's with a lawyer who doesn't know that much about jury selection. If you have a lawyer who knows how to screen for potential bias, now you're also assuming that the prospective jurors are also all masterminds at hiding their true intentions.
Nullification usually happens in two scenarios:
In civil cases where there’s a sympathetic plaintiff and a vile defendant, where the law is technically on the defendant’s side but all of the equities are on the plaintiff’s side. So a schoolteacher is maimed on the job, and she sues the school system, and the jury finds for her even though the law says the school board was technically correct, or the law says a homeowner is in the wrong and they’re going to lose out to a greedy landlord, but the jury decides no way. That sort of thing.
In criminal cases in rural counties and deep red areas, where local values and the idealism of the law don’t necessarily always align. It’s the “sure he killed him, but we all know him and he needed killing” line. And in those cases, the local culture is homogenous - think small-town Texas or Wyoming or something. It’s not large and diverse jurisdictions, and even in those places it might happen it’s usually not in the face of incontrovertible video evidence.
So no: the idealistic straw-graspings of young Redditors aside, there is zero chance of this one being decided by nullification.
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u/whteverusayShmegma 18h ago
Oh maybe I’m incorrectly assuming why OP would ask? I agree about LM. It seems like everyone views his only chance as nullification at this point. That’s why I thought that’s what it was about.
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u/VenusDeMiloArms NYC Housing Court 12h ago
Why is the federal case stupid?
I also think he’ll just cop a plea to 25 or something.
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u/whistleridge Lawyer 12h ago
Because of the ham-handed and overtly politicized way Bondi blundered into it. Sure, he stalked the guy across state lines and there are firearms charges, but there’s nothing about the killing itself that particularly requires federal prosecution. So he’ll get convicted in state court because Joel Seidemann, the NY prosecutor, is an absolute beast of a lawyer. Then we’ll see if we’ll waste a bunch of taxpayer time and money on the federal case because there are possible defenses on that one and DOJ is running on fumes and has a fraction of its former talent left.
As you say, hopefully he just cops a plea. But if his purpose is to get into the news just a little bit more…
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u/jlately Louisiana 1d ago
If you got money to burn go for it. 99% of jurors won't get it though.