Unpopular Opinion: Jury Duty can be used to take a stand for Free Speech.

I appreciate your position -- even more Free Speech Absolutist then me.

 

Well you can count me in as sympathetic with your sentiments but not your strategy. In most states we have at will employment and unless a statute carves out an exception both sides get to end their relationship for any reason whatsoever and that unfortunately means that employers get to fire people for exercising their free speech rights. Personally I want the outrage of public opinion and the conscience of employers and a sense of the patriotic importance of free speech and assembly to work as a check on efforts to punish employees for marching or speaking out on the issues of the day. But if these cases of termination based public conduct not reflective of 'corporate values' continue to rise in number or prominence I'd want us to look at changing the at will employment exceptions to protect employees rights to free speech and assembly outside of work.

Its a lot better than jury nullification because it does not depend on whether the jury pool shares the employers values, or the employees. We both know that how that jury sees the exact same set of facts should a pro life employee be fired for marching outside a PP clinic and sue, will have everything to do with whether it happens in Mississippi or New York. That ain't fair. Fix the law so that it is ideologically neurtral.

I do share your goal of ensuring employers respect their workers private time, and political views.

 

WOW! An innocent SJW, an innocent murderer, dry water, non-alcoholic ethyl alcohol, hot ice, cold fire.

OK. An innocent murderer is someone who got away with murder and is now being charged with a crime of which they are innocent.

 

I really am. I'm totally disgusted by cancel culture. I can see not liking someone for something that they said...but to completely ruin their lives? That is not acceptable to me in the least. It suppresses speech to the point that we might as well be living in the Inquisition era.

 

Absolute idiocy. Find and defendant guilty and not find defendant guilty ... "the juror finds the defendant guilty of breaking the law, but declines to find him guilty".

The juror has not made any findings if it does not announce its finding.

Its like taking a crap and not taking a crap at the same time. The effect is the same. The crap is in the head of the crapper.

 

Believe me, I would prefer to not use JN for it either. But if there is no other recourse at the time that I would have to use it then I would not hesitate to do so. That is what JN is about to me. To rectify a current wrong. In the interim try and work towards laws that will settle the problem once and for all.

 

I agree 100%.

Could anyone discuss the following very likely case. Mr. DePlatformer destroyed Mr. P. Incorr Ect's career. Mr. P. Incorr Ect retaliated by physically attacking Mr. DePlatformer.

Would Jury Nullification be justified in finding Mr. P. Incorr Ect not guilty or at least hanging the jury?

 

Now that's kooky.

Jury nullification = not guilty.

You don't know what you're talking about. It would very adult to just admit you made a mistake and move on.

 

Bravo. You finally got it right.

(Except jury nullification only occurs with a not guilty verdict. A hung jury is not jury nullification.)

 

OK. I tested the water, and 99% of people disagree with me. I will move on.

 

Its actually quite a common occurrence. And has been since even before the founding of the US. Even today many are using it to release those that were found with pot on them.

 

It's not common at all, but it does occur. It's actually quite rare.

 

I would still find them guilty. Assault is never warranted as a reaction to speech.

 

I want to make sure we understand each other. You are my boss I work in a factory in Mayberry North Carolina. Never been written up, exemplary employee. I go to the capital city and march with a whole bunch of left wing radical BLM progressives and I have a sign referring to the local Sheriff as a pig with some artistic fake splattered blood and with a background of the American Flag. Heck I call the local police more four letter words than you have ever heard and I am seen on the evening news screaming my expletives. Now you are getting calls from half of Mayberry wanting you to fire my BLM ass. You intend to stand up for my right to come back to my job on Monday morning as long as I do not bring my politics or my views of the local sheriff onto company property or discuss them on company time because that is what America is all about, and everyone should feel free to say what they want without fear of economic retribution

Are we in agreement?

 

I think it may occur more often than you think.

 

Yes. I don't care what your views are. I would not fire you. I might disagree with you. But I would not fire you. And I'd tell everyone that I will not suppress your speech.

 

Well I think we are in complete agreement. My part of the deal is to work right next to the KKK asshat who's been posting crap about BLM without whining to you about the fact I have to. Everyone gets on with business nobody insults anyone or uses offensive slurs at work and we all go to our pickups with very different bumper stickers.

we see this the same way. Everyone puts on their big boy pants and remembers that offensive andnunpopular speech just happens in this country in our private lives

 

It helps when the OP makes sense. I see you've realized the mistake in thinking nullification can result in a guilty verdict. It would have helped if you began with post #157. Better late than never.

I understand your "anger." I'm not a big fan of cancel culture. Indeed, I hadn't heard of it before about 2 months ago. That kind of thing just doesn't interest me, nor my co-workers or friends, so nobody talked about it.

I remember Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder getting fired for a racial comment. There were others, but he sticks out in my memory. Had to be 20 years ago, at least. From my minor understanding of the movement, cancel culture appears to be the same thing that happened to Jimmy the Greek. The only difference is now it's on steroids, spread at light speed through social media, in which the common man can participate. I imagine the phone calls made to Jimmy's bosses were highly confidential. I'm not a leftist, so the partisan flavor of the "movement" is a bit bitter. (I'm independent, so the bitter taste from the far right is equally unpleasant.) IMO, what they are doing isn't necessarily wrong in principle. I see it as an online boycott. But apparently things have gotten to the point where everybody on the far left wants everybody on the far right cancelled. Think about that for a second. I think it's extreme. I can reject it out of hand based only on the extremism, though I have other reasons as well.

I asked you to ponder what I wrote because you are proposing the exact same thing; you want to cancel the cancellers. Indeed, your proposal uses the term nullification. The words cancel and nullification are synonymous.

I also want you to consider what type of nullification you are promoting, and understand that this has occurred before, mostly in the Jim Crow South. I know I don't need to be more specific for you to connect the dots.

Lastly, your scenario, though useful for discussion, would never occur in 2020. Literally impossible. Too many safeguards in place.

Myself, I couldn't care less about anything driven by social media. I haven't looked at Facebook in years. So, I'm not really concerned with the hysteria caused by cancellers and anti-cancellers. The little I've read shows that big names rarely suffer much, and recover quickly from "cancelling," JK Rowling being one. I see a lot of hoopla over nothing, which unfortunately drowns out what at its core is a worthy message. It's become pop-culture, from what I can tell, and I ignore pop-culture.

Anyway, my response to the scenario would be to find the defendant guilty, and then publicize your concerns and become active against cancel culture. Setting a violent offender free would not gain you any support, and it would only make matters worse.

 

Thank you. If most of those who oppose Cancel Culture are against my idea of convicting "innocent" proponents of Cancel Culture, then my idea can not gain traction. I apologize for OP.

 

If someone retaliated for being unjustly cancelled, then jurors must take into account the enormous injustice the Defendant has suffered as a mitigating circumstance. Acquittal or hung jury may be the best outcome. This is a classic example of Jury Nullification.

 

Here:

He was guilty of real Hate Speech. In 2020, thousands of people are fired for mild political opinions.

 

Ain't gonna work. Getting fired is a civil case, and no one has ever considered getting fired to me a mitigating circumstance for violent crime. If you want this to succeed you have to set him up by letting him sleep with your wife. Then you can shoot him. You'll still be convicted, but the mitigating circumstance would be explored.

 

I am speaking from a jurors perspective. Any juror who believes in Freedom must do anything they can to mitigate the lot of a person who suffered injustice for moderate political opinion.

Hopefully enough Conservatives and some Liberals will view perpetrators of Cancel Culture with contempt.

 

I do not advocate any assaultive behavior on anyone's part. My point is that it is the duty of any juror who supports Freedom to maximally mitigate the fate of someone who suffered injustice for opinions which are not Hate Speech.

 

It really doesn't matter how you qualify it, it's the same thing. Being fired for speech. Racist, sexist, hateful, ignorant, doesn't really matter. Even if it's truly benign, it doesn't matter.

You both are playing the same game, which I wish you would have addressed rather than snip.

If I write something on Twitter attempting to cancel someone, no one will know. If I can convince thousands of others to support me, people take notice. If I can convince a million people to support me, I can cancel that someone.

If you try to free a guilty defendant, nobody will know, but the other 11 jury members, who will look at you strangely. If you can convince 5 jury members to agree with you, you may hang the jury. If you can convince all 11, you can cancel the crime.

Pretty near identical twins, from my vantagepoint.