Shona Banda Drug Arrest: A Prime Case for Jury Nullification

 “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision… you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy”.

— First Chief Justice John Jay
State Of Georgia v. Brailsford (1794)

“It is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty…to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”

— John Adams, 1771

“…..it is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.”

— Thomas Jefferson,
“Notes on Virginia,” 1782

“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.”

— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Horning v. District of Columbia, 1920

“Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction…if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong.”

— Alexander Hamilton, 1804