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We Need to Start Talking About Jury Nullification [1]

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Date: 2025-07-07

Jury nullification is an old American tradition, dating back to before the War of Independence. You may remember a printer named John Peter Zenger from American history classes. Zenger was a printer and publisher in New York who angered British officials. The royalists put Zenger on trial and even though he was technically guilty of the charges against him, the jury acquitted him. They ignored the evidence and they nullified an unjust judicial proceeding.

The colonists used the tools they had to fight injustice and they refused to blindly follow the rules of a legal system that oppressed them. They refused to collaborate in the destruction of their own freedoms.

And today a new tyranny is quickly taking shape, a tyranny that represents a renunciation of everything the Spirit of 1776 stood for. They want a king ,someone to tell them what to think and what to feel, to tell them whether to believe their eyes and ears or to believe the Boss. They want to steal and loot the public coffers shamelessly, they want to beat up and arrest the opposition, they want to flood our neighborhoods with masked goon squads just as our neighborhoods were once flooded with redcoats and hireling Hessian mercenaries. They don’t want equality before the law, they want: For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law.

And this is no “law” at all, it’s the mockery of true law, the rule of law.

And if Donald Trump and his goons want to use the DoJ and law enforcement to go after his enemies, jury nullification is a part of our heritage that’s worth dusting off.

It’s plain as day that Trump’s friends are never going to be federally prosecuted. He’s pardoning fraudsters and crooks left and right. So we already know a big part of the “justice system” is broken; selective prosecution is one of the worst forms of injustice and it’s hard to notice sometimes, but when the law only applies to the state’s enemies that’s not justice. The only prosecutions we’re going to have are ones that serve this emerging tyrant state, or cases they just don’t care about.

What is different about the system Trump is trying to create in this country from the “justice system” they have in Russia or China? They have laws in Russia and China, they arrest common criminals and maintain order, but those systems don’t represent equality before the law, or even an attempt at it. They exist to maintain order so that a parasitic ruling class can oppress the population and the law is just a tool in the toolkit of oppression.

Now I ask you, knowing that the law is a weapon in the hands of the tyrant state, do the Russian people, do the Chinese people owe those “legal systems” their respect and their deference? When the state chooses to prosecute someone for political ends, and when the state ensures its friends can break the law with impunity, how much respect do the citizens owe that system? Do they owe compliance? Are they obligated to cooperate in their own oppression?

The colonists knew the answer to that, and their answer was no.

So if the DoJ or some other enforcement arm of the Trump regime is coming after someone, if there’s even any hint it might be politically motivated, then it’s time to nullify. If you look hard enough you can pin something on anyone, and you can at least put them through a lot of stress and financial loss by prosecuting them.

It would be a lot less stressful if people knew a jury of their peers had their backs and that no conviction was going to be forthcoming under any circumstances. And if people are being selectively persecuted, we have the right to put an end to it. There’d be no way to discuss it in the jury room, so in practice it would mean hung juries some of the time, but that’s better than an unjust conviction.

It’s a controversial subject and judges in particular don’t like even mentioning the idea. Can it be misused? Sure, it can be and it has been. But no matter how good something is, it can be misused. That’s not much of an argument at all. Give a thirsty man too much water and he’ll die, doesn’t mean he can’t ever have any water.

It is absurd and self-destructive for anyone to argue that we are obliged to preserve the law by cooperating in the goon squad’s use of the law to destroy the rule of law, to permit the persecution of their enemies. Our legal system hasn’t served us all that well of late, in any case, and pretending the system is somehow infallible or above politics is not in the people’s interest.

Our legal system is rotting from the head down. The Supreme Court makes nonsense rulings that ignore the plain language of the Constitution in letting an insurrectionist run for office, they grant wildly expansive immunity to the president, an immunity the Framers purposely did not provide. They wildly expand executive power into a true imperial presidency, the one thing the Framers most feared. They make a mockery of their so-called doctrine of originalism.

The courts insist on our respect, but it’s a two-way street, and in furthering this tyranny they are spitting in our faces. They have broken the social compact, they have broken the bargain that calls for us to respect them. John Roberts can smirk all he likes and denounce his critics, but he’s destroyed the credibility of the Supreme Court and destroyed it an institution that can reasonably expect the people’s respect. That’s his real legacy and the only one he’ll have. I’m not interested in his and his ilk’s opinions anymore.

The law is a means to an end, it’s not a robotic set of instructions we follow no matter how illogical or broken the outcome. And if you don’t find my words persuasive, try this:

A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means. — Thomas Jefferson

Would our “originalist” judges like to comment?

The pro-tyranny goons have been pushing the Overton window there way for a long time, and I don’t see much reaction from our supposedly pro-democracy “leaders” but a bunch of hand-wringing and sternly worded letters. It’s clear the people will have to take things their future and their freedom into their own hands, the only hands that have ever carried them. We’re going to widen the Overton window in our favor, in freedom’s favor, and we’re going to start pushing back.

And we’re going to have a new birth of freedom, you can count on that.

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