Elf Sternberg

And your position is why jurors are either not told about their right to return a verdict in the face of the facts, or told that they have to apply the law as the judge gives it to them. This stems from the cases before the Civil War where courts were finding it virtually impossible to get convictions under the Fugitive Slave Act. The law had been duly passed, and applied rationally -- the people charged were harboring and assisting escaped slaves -- but juries of their peers refused to convict under the law. This was cited in United States v. Doughterty, District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, 1972, saying:

[The jury has an] unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law.

The right of juries to judge both fact and law was stated by US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, in Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794 ("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 have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy."), and by US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Horning v. District of Columbia, 1920 (The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.). The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in United States v. Moylan, 1969, even more clearly acknowledged a jury's right to return any verdict it wants to: "If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision."

And it's explicitly written into the constitution of both Maryland (Article XXIII: "In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction") and Indiana (Article I, §19: "In all criminal cases whatsoever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.").