Why Jurors Should Refuse to Convict Drug Arrestees

 Should juries vote “not guilty” on low-level marijuana charges to send a message about our country’s insane marijuana arrest policy? Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor and law professor of George Washington University made a powerful argument for jury nullification in an op-ed in Tuesday’s New York Times.

Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. Butler explained that juries have the right and power to use jury nullification to protest unjust laws. 

Mr. Butler points out that nullification was credited with ending our country’s disastrous alcohol prohibition as more and more jurors refused to send their neighbors to jail for a law they didn’t believe in. Butler says we need to do the same with today’s marijuana arrests.

There is growing recognition that today's drug laws are ineffective and unfair. For the first time ever, a recent Gallup poll found that 50 percent of Americans want legalize use of marijuana. Despite half of our country wanting to end marijuana prohibition, the war on marijuana users is as vicious as ever. There were more than 750,000 arrests last year for marijuana possession alone. In New York City, marijuana possession was the #1 reason people were arrested last year; making up 15 percent of all arrests.

People hoping for change should not expect it to come from our “leaders” in Washington. While most of our elected officials know in their hearts that our drug war is an utter failure that fills our prisons while doing nothing to help people struggling with addiction, there is deafening silence when it comes to offering alternatives to the war on drugs. Democrats and Republicans are both cowardly and opportunistic and don’t want to give up their “tough on crime” credentials.

Here is where jury nullification comes in. If our leaders are going to stop the madness, maybe it is up to our peers to say enough is enough.

In Montana last year, a group of five prospective-jurors said they had a problem with someone receiving a felony for a small amount of marijuana. The prosecutors were freaked out about the “Mutiny in Montana” and were afraid they were not going to be able convince12 jurors in Montana to convict. The judge said, in a major New York Times article, “I’ve never seen this large a number of people express this large a number of reservations” and “it does raise a question about the next case.” 

The highest profile group to call for jury nullification for drug offenses is from the creators of the HBO hit series The Wire. David Simon and the other creators of The Wire wrote a passionate piece in Time magazine where they called on Americans to join them in the use of jury nullification as a strategy to slow the drug war machine. From the article:

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right," wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.