1.Constitution.Org. (1994, January 1). History of Jury Nullification. Retrieved from Constitution: http://www.constitution.org/jury/pj/fija_history.htm
2. Julian Heicklen. (2017, November 1). Jury Nullification . Retrieved from Personal.psu: http://www.personal.psu.edu/jph13/JuryNullification.html
3. West's Encyclopedia of American Law. (2008, January 1). Jury Nullification. Retrieved from The Free Dictionary: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/jury+nullification
History
I. Pre1700 (English and US): For the English to protect themselves from the “tyranny” government in the Pre1700’s, they came up with a system of juries. With the first “case” being introduced in 1670- William Penn and William Mead (Quaker activists) were charged with unlawful assembly. According to the article written by Julian Heicklen, the judge of this specific case would not accept any other verdict in court other than guilty- jurors of the case refused to convict the two of those crimes, and because the judge was so mad that the jurors didn’t perceive the “convicts” of being guilty, he forced the …show more content…
1700 to 1799 (English and US): It wasn’t until 1735 that America was introduced to jury nullification when a printer of “The New York Weekly Journal” named John Zenger attacked one of the kings appointed officers Governor William Cosby. Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, put himself on the jury and stated that the court’s law was unacceptable because Zenger never said anything in his articles that were untrue or false. After a few short minutes passed by, the jury nullified the law, and determined that Zenger would be proclaimed as “not guilty”- and ever since the “truth” has been a defense in all blasphemous cases. Later, in American history, state constitutions started being passed (for example: Georgia Constitution of 1777 and Pennsylvania of 1790) stating that the jury of cases should be the judge of the law, and the eyes of what’s facts and what’s