Well, I admit that I’m not an advocate of jury nullification. IMHO, that places way too much power in the hands an individual who’s agenda may or may not be reasonable. The potential for abuse far outweighs any possible benefit nullification may offer. Those who support nullification should rightfully be excluded from juries as far as I am concerned.
The most that one individual can do is cause a mistrial. Then it will be up to the court to decide if the case is strong enough for a retrial with a different jury.
Nullification only comes into its own with a unanimous jury acquittal verdict despite the law and the evidence. During prohibition, many juries would just not convict, so the courts innovated the use of the “injunction” in so many ways that a rum runner could not avoid violating it. But if they did, they would go before *just* a judge, no jury, to face a charge of “contempt”, for which they could get a year less a day.
But the rules of jury trials are bizarre, to say the least.
For example, jurors may not consult the Bible in their deliberations, but they may flip a coin to decide guilt or innocence.
I was utterly horrified by a trial of a child murderer in California. The evidence was damning, and the defendant made it a point to “flip off” the jury. After the guilty verdict, one of the jurors remarked, “I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until he flipped us off. Then I *knew* he was guilty!”
This was inadequate to overturn the verdict on appeal.
The fear of the abuse of nullification became pronounced when in many cities, black jurors refused to convict a black person for anything, using the excuse that too many black people had already been imprisoned, and that the system was inherently unfair.
Oddly enough, at least to some extent they had a point, in so far as the original intent of the idea of nullification. In pre-revolutionary Britain, there were cases where juries would acquit, but the judge would reverse their decision and direct them to convict. This was seen as an intolerable affront to the jury system.
Likewise, double jeopardy was seen as a way to prevent the crown from repeatedly trying someone until convicted. (It is noteworthy that double jeopardy has been repealed in Britain, after 200 years or more.)
Thus, jury nullification is one of the few special powers outside of the Bill of Rights, for ordinary citizens.