CRIM 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Jury Nullification, Gie, Ope
1 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Role of the jury: under our criminal justice system, the jury is the fact finder. This means they consider the evidence presented to them at trial much will be conflicting and determine what actually happened. If they do(cid:374)"t accept the reliability of the scientific testing, they can reject the results. Restrictions of jury: they must base their decision only on the evidence provided in court. They are not allowed to do their own investigation, read newspaper accounts of the trial, look up information in scientific journals or other outside materials: they may not consider evidence that was excluded by the judge. If something comes up in the testimony and the judge instruct the jury to disregard what they heard, they (cid:373)ust do so. After the attorneys have given their closing arguments, the judge will instruct the juror on the relevant law.
