Bundy Ranch Nullified

We love this:

A federal jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to convict four defendants who were retried on accusations that they threatened and assaulted federal agents by wielding assault weapons in a 2014 confrontation to stop a cattle roundup near the Nevada ranch of states' rights figure Cliven Bundy.

In a stunning setback to federal prosecutors planning to try the Bundy family patriarch and two adult sons later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all 10 charges, and delivered not-guilty findings on most charges against Scott Drexler and Eric Parker.

Here's part of the original Bundy Ranch standoff:

We don't pretend to understand Western land management issues but it seems to us the Bundy's are guilty as hell.

We don't care.

Back in our professorial days we used to teach about John Peter Zenger, the great 1730s New York newspaperman who published things that made governor William Cosby look bad. It was illegal to do so. The crown brought Zenger to trial and the jury, determining that Zenger was publishing true facts, nullified the prosecution.

We love jury nullification.

Here is what the great Professor Glenn Reynolds has to say on the matter:

If you are a member of a jury in a criminal case, even if you think the defendant is guilty of the crimes charged, you are entirely free to vote for acquittal if you think that the prosecution is malicious or unfair, or that a conviction in that case would be unjust, or that the law itself is unconstitutional or simply wrong. And if you do so, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Judges and prosecutors know this. But they don’t want jurors to know it, which is why we occasionally see cases like this one, in which jury-information activist Mark Iannicelli was arrested and charged with “jury tampering” for setting up a small booth in front of a Denver courthouse labeled “Juror Info” and passing out leaflets. Putting up a sign and passing out leaflets sounds like free speech to me, but apparently Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey feels differently.

We welcome more of this and say so proudly, which is probably why we never get called to jury duty.