Jury nullification is just one manifestation of good-ol'-boy-ism.
Good-ol'-boy-ism is a good thing when it let's the sheriff of Mayberry teach a kid a lesson without making him a felon and ruining his future.
Good-ol'-boyism is a horrible thing when it let's the sheriff of Mayberry teach a kid a lesson, making him a felon and ruining his future.
I have personally benefited from the former. I don't know how to reconcile the latter when the only difference was the kid's last name, or skin color, or religion. Every good thing can be abused. Sometimes the scale of abuse calls for the abolition of the "good thing". Sometimes it is better to tolerate some abuse because of the scale of good that comes from the good thing.
For me, this train of thought always breaks down to reasoning that good-ol'-boy-ism is good when the ol'-boys are good and bad when the ol'-boys are bad. But that's obviously broken when 'good' or 'bad' is left to the decision of the ol'-boys. Historically, we just have constant war to decide who gets to be the ol'-boys this week.
That said, if the good-ol'-boy-ism exists, wouldn't you prefer it exist in the hands of a group of disparate individuals chosen (mostly) at random?
I'd prefer that situation over it solely existing in the hands of a few police/judges/etc. with incredible power in deciding the future of the lives of those without power.
Yeah, good-ol'-boy-ism can be present in any part of the justice system. There's no reason to believe it would be worse among the jury pool than, for instance, among prosecutors, judges and law enforcement.
This is certainly the rationale for forbidden discussion of the topic.
However, the first amendment is not to be tossed aside when inconvenient.
The act itself is not preventable without invading the sanctity of the jury room.
The scenario you present shows no relation to the concept of jury nullification presented here; unjust laws versus yours; untouchable persons. One is a protest of society, the other a protection of a group.
It's why the war on drugs doesn't work. You either decriminalize or have a strict zero-tolerance policy like Singapore.
Otherwise, tons of poor people and minorities are arrested on drug charges, while suburban and rich people joke about doing coke and taking illegal prescription drugs.
Why doesn't anyone think that ruining people's future regardless of age is a horrible solution to social problems?
Part of the problem is that there's so much policing of "social issues" that aren't what we traditionally see as crimes. Still even for people that are arguably pretty bad eg. street thugs, repeat DUI offenders, ect., I'm not sure of the wisdom of this policy... and that's not even considering small time first offenders (also ignoring our most serious crimes).
>Why doesn't anyone think that ruining people's future regardless of age is a horrible solution to social problems?
I concur, I think ruining people's futures can be a horrible thing. Depending on the crime, I do think that what we see in some of Europe around "Right to be forgotten" for crimes is a good path forward.
I do not want to advocate for laws that firmly set someone onto a path of crime because of some youthful indiscretions, or, that forever treats a person as a pariah because of something that happened 30 years ago.
The root issue is that human beings are racist or otherwise prejudiced and that’s causing way more problems in many more areas
And prejudice is natural human behavior. Anyone can become prejudiced if they grow up in the right environment
But if all your friends are from all walks of life, you will naturally not be prejudiced. So all we need to do is make sure that we have even the right outreach programs so forces are diverse. When people in places of power are going to cookouts and all theirs buddies are all sorts of different people, all these stupid problems will literally disappear in a generation
>But if all your friends are from all walks of life, you will naturally not be prejudiced.
I'd be careful jumping to the conclusion you did based on this premise because there are a lot of subtleties here. More generally this is known as the contact hypothesis (and related to the diversity exposure hypothesis) and there isn't that much evidence to justify the idea that exposure to multiple walks of life reduces prejudice and on the contrary there is evidence that the opposite is true.
While there is substantial evidence that people who do have friends from all walks of life are less prejudiced as you point out, that's mostly due to self-selection. People less prejudiced have less issue with befriending people from all walks of life, so we should not be surprised that they do so. However, concluding that all people need is to be exposed to diverse groups of people will reduce prejudice is unsupported by research and in fact to the extent that research exists on this, it actually points to the opposite conclusion. For example in situations where people are required to work or interact among different cultures, studies show unfortunately that those people have more negative attitudes towards that community than the general population. This phenomenon is known as negative intergroup contact:
Good-ol'-boy-ism is a good thing when it let's the sheriff of Mayberry teach a kid a lesson without making him a felon and ruining his future.
Good-ol'-boyism is a horrible thing when it let's the sheriff of Mayberry teach a kid a lesson, making him a felon and ruining his future.
I have personally benefited from the former. I don't know how to reconcile the latter when the only difference was the kid's last name, or skin color, or religion. Every good thing can be abused. Sometimes the scale of abuse calls for the abolition of the "good thing". Sometimes it is better to tolerate some abuse because of the scale of good that comes from the good thing.
For me, this train of thought always breaks down to reasoning that good-ol'-boy-ism is good when the ol'-boys are good and bad when the ol'-boys are bad. But that's obviously broken when 'good' or 'bad' is left to the decision of the ol'-boys. Historically, we just have constant war to decide who gets to be the ol'-boys this week.