Does the President believe in jury nullification?

[grasswire]

16. SC specifically

What has the United States Supreme Court had to say about jury nullification?

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court stated in 1789:
“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”

Samuel Chase, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Declaration of Independence, said in 1796: “The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said in 1902:
“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.”

Harlan F. Stone, the 12th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stated in 1941: “The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.”

In a 1952 decision (Morissette v United States), the U. S. Supreme Court recognized the powers of juries to engage in nullification. The court stated:
“Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges....They might have refused to brand Morissette as a thief. Had they done so, that too would have been the end of the matter.”

In a 1972 decision (U. S. v Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139), the Court said: “The pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge.”

Likewise, the U. S. Supreme Court in Duncan v Louisiana implicitly endorsed the policies behind nullification when it stated: “If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of the jury to the more tutored but less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it.” — Julian Heicklen, “Jury Nullification”

In 1895, in United States v. Sparf, the court effectively found that, yes the juror had the sovereign right to exercise reason, judgment, and conscience with respect to both fact and law; but because he presumptively already knows he has this right from extra-legal sources, judges are not required to explain it to him.

…to this day, trial jurors retain the right to veto, or “nullify” bad laws, though they are rarely told this by the courts. Prosecutors and judges try to exclude people from serving on juries who admit knowing they can judge the law, or who have doubts about the justice of the law.

another post to follow re: nullification generally