New Hampshire Adopts Jury Nullification Law
30th June 2012
Jury nullification, in which jurors refuse to convict defendants under laws they find objectionable or inappropriately applied, is a favored tactic of many libertarians who, rightly or wrongly perceive individual liberty as, at best, a minority taste among their neighbors. They like the idea of a tool that can be wielded on the spot to shield people from powerful control freaks without first having to win a popularity contest. But nullification is useful only if people know about. And last week, New Hampshire’s governor signed a law requiring the state’s judges to permit defense attorneys to inform jurors of their right to nullify the law.
Now, this is very curious. Lynch is a Democrat, which in New Hampshire means he’s a transplant from Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the nation. Democrats, especially Massachusetts Democrats (think Kennedys) aren’t famous for being very libertarian. So what’s his agenda here?
Data point 1: New Hampshire, long a bastion of individual rights (which these days is characterized as ‘conservative’, although ‘conservatives’ don’t have a great record when it comes to individual rights), is becoming increasingly liberal because of immigration by left-winger Summer People from the surrounding blue states of Vermont, Maine, and especially Massachusetts.
Data point 2: New Hampshire has a lot of laws that socialists dislike, especially with respect to things like gun rights and property rights.
Suspicion: Lynch sees this as a wedge whereby increasingly liberal immigrants can overturn, in their local communities, laws intended to preserve individual rights without the effort needed to do a state-wide change through a still-Republican-controlled legislature. Muslims are doing the same thing with respect to shari’a law in Britain and Europe, and probably in the United States in places like Michigan (which the Crustian media refuse to report, since it goes against the Party Line).
But only time will tell.