One fabulous reason to prosecute Bush-era officials for torture and war crimes

[elfs]

Do you think, if we convince the Justice department to actually fulfill its obligations under the law and prosecute Bush-era officials for torture and war crimes, that would be incentive enough to ram the Fully Informed Jury Act through Congress and suddenly have every right-wing pundit in the nation talking about it as loudly and frequently as possible?

Just a thought.

Comments

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I would not have a problem with this at all.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

This is a twisted notion I can really stand behind!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Care to inform your readers what the "Fully Informed Jury Act" is?

[tagryn]

Has to do with jury nullification from what Google coughs up.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

That does seem a fair summary at the link. Some bias towards nullification, but I think it can be argued that the problem it guards against is abuse of law by Police and prosecutors, rather than actual legislation.

Even the William Penn case, somebody had to decide to prosecute.

OK, call it a quibble, but it's part of the problem. Just what do you tell a jury?

I think we have some really stinking laws, here in the UK, and I can imagine cases where I would consider the option. But we do have provisions in the system for majority verdicts. And jury selection would soon be affected.

In any case, I would be against reducing the power of a jury.

(Other countries do things differently--a jury is not the only way of ensuring fair trials.)

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

On balance, I'm in favor of FIJA. However, I can't help but wonder how FIJA could be abused in cases similar to the racist murders that took place in the South not so many years ago, and how such abuses could be curbed.