Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I did jail time in the Sixties for a peaceful sit-in against the Vietnam War. So (as with many things) my understanding of the issues involved in what may be termed “civil disobedience” is eminently practical as well as theoretical. I was very disturbed by a recent column in the New York Times by Kirk Johnson entitled “Do Motives Matter?” It discussed the DeChristopher case. I reproduce it in its entirety and discuss it below.
Do Motives Matter? The DeChristopher Verdict
Tim DeChristopher hugged supporters as he left a courthouse in Salt Lake City after his conviction. Associated Press Photo
The American legal system tends to pay obsessive attention to a person’s motives and mental state. A hate crime, for example, only becomes a hate crime at all with motive. Premeditated offenses often get harsher treatment than impulsive acts of rage or passion. The capacity to understand right and wrong is a fundamental threshold of competency in a courtroom.
OK, let’s stop right there. Part of that is simply untrue. In addition, he is conflating motive, premeditation, mental competence, and intent.
The American legal system pays almost no attention to motive. The only crime I can think of in which a person’s motives make a difference is a “hate crime”. This is a recent addition to the law. But if you murder someone, or steal their wallet, your motive is meaningless. You might have stolen to impress your girlfriend. You might need the money to feed your kids. Doesn’t matter, the jury will never hear about your motive. The only question the jury ever considers is “did you do it”, not “why did you do it”.
While premeditation and mental competence and intent are certainly issues to which the law pays “obsessive attention”, they have nothing to do with motive. All they are doing in his essay is confusing the issue. In general the person’s motive for doing something whether a person had noble reasons for committing a crime is legally immaterial to the jury. If motive enters into the record at all, it is only and solely in the sentencing phase, after the person has been found guilty and the jury sent home. Thus the judge acted correctly in doing what Kirk Johnson describes in mildly accusatory accusatory undertones as:
But in the federal trial of Tim DeChristopher, who was convicted on Thursday in Salt Lake City on two felony charges for trying to derail an auction oil and gas leases in southern Utah in late 2008, discussion of motive – at least so far as the jury got to hear – was almost entirely stripped away.
Judge Dee Benson told the lawyers that the case would not be about why Mr. DeChristopher did what he did, but only whether he did it. Federal energy policies and concern about climate change, which were in fact the core drivers of Mr. DeChristopher’s actions, as he has said in many interviews, would not be put on trial, Judge Benson ruled.
And he properly ruled so. DeChristopher’s motives are not relevant to the jury’s deliberations.
Does it matter? In covering the case for The New York Times, I found myself pondering a pretty deep question: In assessing offenses driven by environmental concerns, is an understanding of the “why” crucial to the truth? Or is it a huge distraction because of the politics and complexity and controversy that swirl around the subject?
Is his motive “crucial to the truth” or a “huge distraction”? I would say neither. I would say that an understanding of his motive in the context of what is called “noble cause corruption” is useful in understanding the current sorry state of climate science. In either case his motive does not matter to the law, nor should it.
Would the jury have assessed things differently if the defendant’s deeper psychological portrait had emerged – specifically his belief that risks to the planet and the future are so dire and urgent that rules must be broken?
Or is the “rule of law,” as an assistant United States attorney, John W. Huber, put in it his closing argument, crucial to civil society — the linchpin of protecting everything we have, including and perhaps especially the environment?
I have no sympathy with this argument at all. Why on earth should I care about Mr. DeChristopher’s “deeper psychological portrait”? I don’t generally turn over rocks if I fear that there are strange things under them … I’m not interested in what lies under Mr. DeChristopher’s actions. I have enough problems with the creatures that live under my own skullcap, I have no interest in the unknown denizens of Mr. DeChristopher’s cranium.
Certainly, Mr. DeChristopher, a 29-year-old economics graduate, is no eco-terrorist. This was not an Earth Liberation Front firebombing; the closest he got to violence was raising his bidding paddle at the auction to buy land leases with money he didn’t have. But there was also little doubt, as he had also conceded in interviews, that he broke the law by signing federal forms while posing as a legitimate energy buyer, and then by bidding successfully for upward of $1.8 million in leases from the federal Bureau of Land Management.
Again, I’m not clear what the relevance of this is. He is not an eco-terrorist. He is also not a kidnapper or a child molester … so what? What does that have to do with his case? Is he saying we should have sympathy for him because he is a “white collar criminal”? Because I generally have less sympathy for that breed of crook, not more. I’ll take an honest bank robber over a bank accountant who steals the same amount of money, any time.
In a statement after the verdict, the United States attorney for Utah, Carlie Christensen, addressed part of this debate, one that will no doubt continue in Mr. DeChristopher’s probable appeal. “Whether the B.L.M. was correct in its decision to offer these parcels for oil and gas lease sales was not the question which this jury was asked to resolve,” Ms. Christensen said.
Nor should they be asked to resolve it. It is not a question for the jury.
Look, I have no problem with Mr. DeChristopher’s actions. As I mentioned, I did the same myself, and I did time for it. As we said then, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. However, I never heard the New York Times opining that the judge should have considered my motives in deciding my guilt or innocence. It didn’t matter. I was guilty. As is DeChristopher.
What I have a problem with is when this kind of thinking slops over into the scientific arena. You see, if a scientist thinks it is ethical to break the laws of civil society in the name of saving the planet, I have absolutely no confidence that the same man will not break the laws of honest, transparent, ethical science in the name of saving the planet. As we have seen, sadly, this more than a thoretical threat.
When this occurs in science, it is called “noble cause corruption”. It occurs when a scientist thinks that their cause (saving the world from Thermageddon) is so important and so noble that it transcends plebeian concerns. Their cause is much more critical and vital and important than, you know, mundane boring things like transparency, and scientific integrity, and archiving data that may not agree with your hypothesis, and revealing adverse results. For scientists like that, those are petty scientific concerns, things that only apply to people who are not engaged on a mission from Gaia.
This noble cause corruption, amply personified by Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Gene Wahl, Caspar Amman, Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, Stephen Schneider, Lonnie Thompson, and far too many other leading lights of AGW orthodoxy, has been the root cause of the mistrust of the public in climate science.
And reasonably so. When the public sees top-notch, world-renowned climate scientists lying and cheating and breaking the rules and stuffing the peer-review panels and subverting the IPCC, what do you think will happen to the reputation of the field?
Judith Curry and others keep presenting this as a communications problem. It is not. The AGW folks think the problem is that they’re not getting the word out. So they’ve formed some kind of Guerrilla AGW Killer Rapid Response Ninja Suicide Death Commando Team to answer questions, at least I think that’s the name … guys, lack of AGW scientific opinion is not a problem as far as I can see, quite the opposite. We’ve heard your scientific claims of upcoming catastrophe proclaimed at full volume over and over. And over. And over. The problem is not that your message is not getting across. We hear it. It’s crystal clear, no problem with either the medium or the message. RST is five by five, as the ham radio operators have it.
But most folks simply don’t believe anything you say. You’ve lied to everyone before, you conned us in the past, people are determined it won’t happen again.
The problem is that a large number of the top names in the field have been shown to be, well, liars, cheats, and thieves. They were working hard, in secret, using deplorable, unethical, and likely illegal tactics to advance their noble cause and to protect their secrets and their data and methods.
Now, if that were all, it would be bad. But it is worse than that. If, when all that was revealed, the rest of the honest, decent climate scientists had stood up and pointed and said “For Shame!”, the breach in trust could have been repaired. If the miscreants were identified and disowned by the majority of climate scientists, there would have been problems, but not huge problems.
But that’s not what happened. When the Climategate rock was rolled over, and the UEA nest of scorpions was revealed and they started running from the sunlight, with few and notable exceptions the good, decent, honest climate scientists suddenly found something else really fascinating to talk about. About how it was just boys being boys. About how it was just scientists talking trash about each other in private. About how Climategate meant nothing. About how the use of “hacked” emails was unethical. The overwhelming majority of the good honest decent AGW supporters talked volubly about everything under the sun … everything except the putrid scientific rot Climategate revealed within the top ranks. Nor did they say a peep about a succession of ludicrous whitewash investigations apparently led by Inspector Clouseau of “Pink Panther” fame … silence and closing the ranks was the order of the day.
So as a result much of the general public in the US at least believes that all climate scientists are crooks. They’re not. They’re mostly just reasonable, curious scientists who tragically were unwilling to speak up for scientific honesty and integrity when history called on them to do so. And as the saying goes, for scorpions to succeed, all that is necessary is for good climate scientists to do nothing.
After all of that, anyone who thinks that what we have is a communications problem, or that it can be solved by better scientific explanations, or that it can be fixed by reframing the discussion, is seriously deluding themselves. Someday, good science will eventually win out. Not communication. Not reframing. Good science.
But until then, I can assure you that if a climate scientist says it’s raining outside, any reasonable person will surreptitiously glance out the window …
w.
[Update] There is an outstanding comment below:
Turn this around when thinking about the “profit motive” such that the “profit motive” were a valid legal defense. A really scary thought, that one is.
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Onion2: Well the problem here is that you label these people such because you suspect they would falsify scientific results…
Not necessarily, Onion. There are a number of reasons to make the list besides falsifying results. Things like evading FOI requests, violating peer-review procedures in professional journals, ditto in IPPC reviews, hiding data and analyses that detract from your preferred position, ….
What is the difference between the crimes of Jean Valjean and Bernie Madoff, if not motive?
Willis does battle with the Careful Speakers of climate science:
http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/2073400
Intent is a defense, motive less so. For example:
Intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter. if your actions were not intended to kill but did so accidentally, then it is not murder but manslaughter, within limits.
The same is true for self-defense. If you intent was simply to defend yourself and you accidentally kill your attacker, this can be ruled self-defense, again within limits.
However, if you set out to kill someone to defend yourself, this could well be viewed as first degree murder. Simply because you believe someone intends to harm you in the distant future gives you no right to kill them today.
Thus, the argument that a belief in future environmental harm gives you the right to commit a crime today is no defense. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The NYT article seems fairly neutral on the subject matter sans the headline.
Perhaps if the opening question in the NYT headline read;
Does the rule of law matter more than motives?
In this case, given the “known” uncertainties, clearly the rule of law matters most.
We would need to be almost certain of an alternative outcome, to overturn the existing rule of law, within normal legal channels. Short of living in a police state, and overthrowing that government, I think we are bound to the existing rule of law.
Where this get’s interesting, is in the government’s creation of new environmental rules/laws/regulations and civil disobedience. You may not like, or disagree with, these laws, you can protest, or get those laws changed, through the available legislative and judicial remedies, however, you are still bound by the rule of law.
Turn this around when thinking about the “profit motive” such that the “profit motive” were a valid legal defense. A really scary thought, that one is.
onion2 says:
“’This noble cause corruption, amply personified by Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Gene Wahl, Caspar Amman, Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, Stephen Schneider, Lonnie Thompson, and far too many other leading lights of AGW orthodoxy, has been the root cause of the mistrust of the public in climate science.’
“Well the problem here is that you label these people such because you suspect they would falsify scientific results, not because you have any evidence or proof that they have.
“So by definition any scientist concerned about man-made climate change enough to vocally speak out about it gets added to your list of ‘nobel cause corruption.'”
Onion2, after all these weeks of your nasty comments, have you not learned anything? We have the evidence, which you refuse to look at. You are the denier.
—————-
sceptical says:
“There is no noble cause corruption from those whom you alledge. Instead the corruption is on sites such as this by people such as yourself, which are able to ignore scientific study and evidence because there is a noble cause of stopping those who are a threat to your worldview. Your calls a few weeks back to concentrate on the science instead of the scientists has gone unheeded by yourself.”
Are you and onion2 dating, or, possibly, the same person? Nobody’s threatening our world view; we don’t have trillions upon trillions of potential carbon trading profits on the line. We weren’t organized by Enron or bankrolled by Goldman Sachs. None of the skeptics I’m aware of here has anything to gain from their position, but ALL of the True Believers I’m aware of have everything to gain from theirs. I can’t tell you how many of my True Believer friends have invested in carbon trading and windmills, hoping to get rich off of government subsidies and strong-arming the public. Take away the profit and donation motive, and I guarantee you that 90% or more of AGW’s most vocal believers and defenders would abandon the cause overnight. And this includes the BBC, which has FIVE BILLION dollars of its retirement fund invested in carbon trading. And do you think their reporting is honest and unbiased?
It isn’t just Noble Cause corruption that’s the problem. It’s also IGNOBLE CAUSE CORRUPTION. Climate Science has been reduced to a joke accomplishing nothing other than spreading hysteria, especially among children. And the crew you defend is among its most loathsome representatives.
DeChristopher was participating in civil disobedience.
Thoreau wrote the book on Civil Disobedence (well, at least the essay).
Thoreau went jail for his civil disobedience. Why should DeChristopher be any different? He broke the law now he should accept his punishment.
Great post, Willis. Excusing blame because of a “noble cause” is another very slippery slope in this society at the present time. “Hate” crimes is closely related, I think.
You are dead on about looking out the window, LOL!
Wonderful article, I endorse each and every word.
Just a technical quibble on the use of motive in courtrooms. You are correct that the quality of the motive is irrelevant in the courtroom. However, there is the matter of having a motive or not having one. Most states distinguish between murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree on the ground that to prove first degree murder the prosecution must show that the accused was rational, calm, had a motive, and acted on the motive at the time of the killing.
The quality of the motive does not matter in first degree murder cases. If you killed to eliminate a rival or killed to gain an inheritance it is all the same to the court.
I have a confession to make. Not only have I told lies, but I have knowingly told lies to my own children. I have told them there was a father Chrismas, an easter bunny and a tooth fairy.
Yet when I make the confession, people smile and say ‘ohh, what a good father’
Last night I told my wife her hair looked nice and her bum didnt look too big in her outfit. I guess that makes me a good husband as well.
There is no way in the world we will stop people lying in a good cause, being righteously corrupt, or even fighting and dying for a noble cause. We should not even try, the best way to fight fire is not with fire but with water.
This is the greatest test of the scientific process ever. A process that cannot weed out the noble cause liars and goodly corrupt does not deserve to survive
EO
“The American legal system pays almost no attention to motive. ” That statement is clearly incorrect. If a person sees a hat and thinks it is his and takes it, is not a crime it is a mistake. If he sees the hat and just wants it and takes it, is a crime.
Intent or motive can be a major factor in a criminal case. The problem is how to prove motive. How to prove the person in the hat case did or did not think the hat was his. In either case he could be in civil court in a suit for damages because he damaged the owner of the hat by taking it.
The slippery slope of the
EndCause Justifying the Means has gone over the edge into motive.Once that point is reached, arrogance is found to be in ample supply.
There is no Good Faith to be found anywhere in such endeavors.
sceptical says:
March 12, 2011 at 5:03 am
“There is no noble cause corruption from those whom you alledge. Instead the corruption is on sites such as this by people such as yourself, which are able to ignore scientific study and evidence…”
When are you going to publish those physical hypotheses which are necessary to explain and predict the forcings that are caused by manmade CO2 and that are necessary to cause an increase in temperatures that is dangerous? This increase is additional to that caused by manmade CO2 alone, an increase which is not dangerous. Warmista talk about the brilliance of their science constantly. Why won’t they publish their science?
The law concerns itself with WHAT was done. The media is interested in WHY it was done (uses up lots more words). The lawyers are interested in LEGAL COMPLEXITIES that maximize billable hours. The judge is interested in a nap-enabling ADJOURNMENT. The defendant is obsessed his foolish refusal to COP A PLEA and avoid this mess.
This is American system of justice in action. Use every means at your disposal to AVOID DIRECT CONTACT with it.
I tend to agree that climate scientists should be assumed to be eligible for the “noble cause” argument. I tend to believe that many of our politicians (like maybe Al Gore) do not. Problematically, a number of these scientists have moved into the politician area and are similarly in-eligible for the noble cause argument (Mr. Mann and James Hansen come to mind.)
PS. Sceptical. We all read the emails (evidence), what these guys were doing was not science, it was something else. Insisting that we are stupid because we don’t go along with an accepted opinion is also something other than science.
Taphonomic says:
March 12, 2011 at 8:42 am
“Thoreau went jail for his civil disobedience. Why should DeChristopher be any different? He broke the law now he should accept his punishment.”
Yep. The Western thinker who wrote the book on civil disobedience, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., explained to all of his protest participants that they must accept the legal penalties for breaking specific laws. Of course, MLK had a more sophisticated theory of civil disobedience than anything we can find in DeChristopher’s behavior.
Willis made the statement: “I’ll take an honest bank robber over a bank accountant who steals the same amount of money”, and has caught a lot of flak. However, I agree in a way. I put some trust in the bank employee that I would never do with the bank robber-type guy.
Betrayal of trust is very painful thing. If I’m to be robbed, I’d prefer it not be done by someone I trust.
Joshua Corning says: March 12, 2011 at 2:50 am
It should also be noted that the law does make a distinction between robbing $1000 and embezzling $1000 dollars and the punishment the law deals for the two crimes reflects the the exact opposite of your idiotic moral algebra.
———————————————————————-
Joshua Corning. Yawn. It is such a pity that you have to be so literal. I suspect that you were the only one reading this who did not understand what Willis was saying.
Douglas
A very well reasoned essay on the dangers of the so-called “noble cause corruption”, however, one thing that seems to be missed by many on both sides of the AGW issue, and it is brought forth in this statement by Willis. Referring to the message given by AGW “warmist” scientists, he wrote:
“The problem is not that your message is not getting across. We hear it. It’s crystal clear, no problem with either the medium or the message. RST is five by five, as the ham radio operators have it. But most folks simply don’t believe anything you say…”
____
I think it would be most illuminating if in fact we looked at this notion that “most folks simply don’t believe anything you have to say…” and break it down as to what is actually happening.
Let’s take the expression “most folks” as meaning the average person in society, as average would be some nice middle part or majority of the bell-shaped curve. Truth is, most folks (i.e. the average person you might find shopping at Walmart or Costco, or stuck in rush hour traffic) simply DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE AGW ISSUE. I’ve said this before on WUWT, and I’ll say it again…the people who frequent this blog and the other dozen or so blogs that discuss this issue are hardly average. We are all at the fringes of society in that we come to blogs like this to discuss issues that the average person who just wants to pay their rent, buy groceries, and send little Billy to college really doesn’t care about. We should not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. So, going back to Willis’ statement, we see that it is wrong state that “most folks don’t believe” climate scientists anymore. Most folks on your street or in your little town could not tell you what climategate was all about, and quite honestly, don’t really care.
Why is it important to know this? Because (except for the few on the fringe of politics), you won’t get the average voter’s interest in supporting some kind of mass reaction against dishonest climate scientists (assuming there were any). This isn’t an issue likely to enrage the passions of the electorate. Furthermore, within reason, people will accept laws, regulations, and even taxes imposed upon them so long as they don’t significantly make their lives worse, more importantly, less convenient. There is a threshold beyond which the government must not pass before the great moderate middle of the electorate get up in arms or generally raise a stink about an issue.
So here are the several scenarios in the way the AGW issue could play out over the next few decades or so, with each scenario (or some combination thereof) having a degree of probability which cannot be known because they are based on data not fully known:
1) AGW derived climate change related issues will generally get worse, causing obvious disruptions in global weather and the all important food supplies. The climate disruption will become so obvious that the great moderate middle will readily accept it as happening and it will so inconvenience their lives that they will generally accept whatever attempts are made at the political and technological level to mitigate the worst of the climate disruptive effects.
2) AGW skeptics will succeed in stalling any meaningful regulations or controls on GH gases, and it will prove to be a good thing as AGW will prove to be a farce, and billions in potentially wasted dollars will be saved. AGW skeptics will be proven as heros.
3) AGW skeptics will succesd in stalling any meaningful regulations or controls on GH gases for a short time, and that success will prove disastrous in the long run as it will have wasted critical time in getting GH gases under control, making issues far worse later on.
4) AGW warmist and skeptics will battle on the political front for a few years, during which time the great moderate middle of the society generally ignore the issue while the climate will continue on with its natural variations, and eventually the issue will fade away until the next issue that conservative and liberals can fight about (because of their basic psychological differences) comes along.
5) AGW will accelerate to far worse levels than even the most pessimistic IPCC scenario causing such a great climate disruption that resource wars over food and water erupt and governments (that are able to survive) around the world are forced to impose strict regulations and even impose marshal law due to chaotic nature of the worldwide political system and general global turmoil as humans begin to fight for their very survival as a species. Eventually, humanity ends up much like James Lovelock forecast, as small bands of tribes clinging to the edges of a very warm Arctic ocean.
Gates, you’re craving scenario #5, aren’t you?
However, you missed the elephants in the room: China, India, Brazil, Russia and a hundred smaller countries that are emitting CO2 for all they’re worth. Whether the U.S. and the West cuts CO2 emission to zero won’t even matter.
I notice you rarely if ever mention the world’s biggest CO2 emitter. Instead you want to impoverish the U.S., based on zero evidence that CO2 causes damage to the planet.
If it were not for evidence-free conjecture, you wouldn’t have a lot to say, would you?
R. Gates says:
March 12, 2011 at 10:12 am
The Nobility of the AGW cause is in question, for 2 separate reasons:
1.) The high ground of the cause rests on a pretense of nobility, as evidenced by the actions of the Noble Pretenders.
2.) AGW is no more than a suspicion, being indistinguishable from natural causes.
Even mass extinctions themselves are not evidence of AGW, should they become manifest before our eyes, as these have occured under natural causes many times prior.
Here’s a nugget for you: AGW is confounded all day long by the laws of nature, geology, history and civilizations.
tallbloke says:
March 12, 2011 at 3:41 am
Translation: you don’t like the ruling, so you’d like folks to think that the only possible way for DeChristopher to actually change things was civil disobedience. Plus put in a dig at the Judge in the process, who seems to have ruled correctly throughout.
Generally in this life there’s more than one option. To my shame, I’ve used tallbloke’s excuse before, “It was the only possible action given the gravity and urgency of the situation.” Generally, it’s just that, an excuse.
w.
For all the people commenting on the bankrobber comment:
-I think the point of the statement is that the “honest” bankrobber is “honest” because he is stealing the money because he needs it to say feed his family, etc.
-The bank accountant is stealing not for an honest cause, but for simple greed.
This is my take on the comment, I could be wrong, but why add the word honest if you didn’t mean that? A bank robber who is stealing for greed is no different than the bank accountant, just is not in the same position so needs to use different means.
I would also point out that people like the defendant are choosing these methods to punish the rest of us who are not as “enlightened” as him. He doesn’t want to “raise awareness”, he want to force you to think like him. He wants to punish you until you do. He also doesn’t expect to be punished back after, cause “he is right” and we are “wrong”. He is delusional in that he can’t differentiate between right and wrong, only between his opinion and others does he identify right and wrong. Anything he does to us is justified, in his mind.
onion2 says:
March 12, 2011 at 4:36 am
I loved the typo, “Nobel cause corruption”, I plan to steal it quite shamelessly.
Next, I said nothing in general about falsification of results. That’s your words, not mine. I said they personified noble cause corruption, which is a very different thing.
onion2, clearly you’re new to this story. Start by reading the Climategate emails end to end. Learn about Caspar and the Jesus Paper. Study up on Michael Mann and the “CENSORED” folder. Find out about Lonnie Thompson.
I put each of those men in the list deliberately, with great care, and for good reason. It is not a random list as you seem to think. It is a list of sufferers, people whose professional lives have been blighted by Nobel cause corruption.
w.
@Willis
I suggest you review the following about motive in criminal proceedings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means,_motive,_and_opportunity
Motive, or lack thereof, can be important and is certainly not generally excluded from the courtroom. A good lawyer ought to be able to get this ruling thrown out on appeal due to improper judicial conduct.
In this case the guy had a motive and if the prosecution thought they needed to show motive to secure a conviction they would have done it. Obviously the prosecution didn’t think they needed to prove motive and there was no reason, IN THE JUDGE’S OPINION for the defense to prove it either as it would theoretically add to the prosecution’s case. The only possible reason for the defense to show motive would either be publicity for the cause and/or influencing a member of the jury to exercise his or her constitutional right of nullification.
I’m disturbed by the article as well because I believe showing motive should always be an option for the defense as I am an ardent supporter of jury nullification and believe the justice system is corrupted when juries are not informed that they can sit in judgement of the law as well as the accused and if they feel the law is unfair they can refuse to convict even when it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the law has been broken.
I believe all juries should be informed they can find a verdict of not guilty for any damn reason they want including the reason that they don’t approve of the law. This is one of the important checks and balances built into our constitution. It is why citizens are entitled to a speedy trial before a jury of their peers. It is a power check against a government that is creating unpopular laws. Power under our constitution ultimately rests with the people. That’s you and me not our representatives and not our appointees. We have little enough direct power as individuals and I strongly object to giving up the right of jury nullification.
Last time I was called in for jury duty I made it quite clear to the prosecution I would sit in judgement of the law as well as the law breaker. That’s probably the surest way there is to not get selected for a jury. But at least I let the entire roomful of potential jurors know they could judge the law as well as the lawbreaker and no one can stop them.