JURIES MAY DECLARE PEACE IN THE DRUG WAR

Should juries vote "not guilty" on low-level marijuana charges to send
a message about our country's insane drug policies?

Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine under which jurors can
acquit defendants who are technically guilty but don't deserve
punishment. As law professor Paul Butler wrote recently in the New
York Times, juries have the right and power to use it to protest
unjust laws.

Butler points out that nullification was credited with helping to end
Prohibition, as more and more jurors refused to send their neighbors
to jail for a law they didn't believe in. He says we need to do the
same in the case of today's marijuana arrests.

There is growing recognition that our drug laws are ineffective and
unfair. For the first time, a recent Gallup Poll found that 50 percent
of Americans want to legalize marijuana use.

Despite that, the war on marijuana users is as vicious as ever. There
were more than 750,000 arrests for possession last year. In New York
City, marijuana possession was the No. 1 reason people were arrested
last year, accounting for 15 percent of all arrests.

People hoping for change should not expect it to come from Washington.
While most of our elected officials know in their hearts that the drug
war is an utter failure, filling our prisons while doing nothing to
help people struggling with addiction, there is a deafening silence
when it comes to offering alternatives. Democrats and Republicans
alike are too cowardly and opportunistic to give up their "tough on
crime" credentials.

This is where nullification comes in. If our leaders aren't going to
stop the madness, maybe it is up to our peers.

In a Montana case last year, several prospective jurors said they
would not vote to convict someone of a felony for possessing a small
amount of marijuana. Prosecutors feared they would not be able find 12
jurors in the state who would. The judge in the case was quoted as
saying, "I've never seen this large a number of people express this
large a number of reservations," adding "it does raise a question
about the next case."

Perhaps the highest-profile call for jury nullification in drug cases
came from the creators of the hit HBO series The Wire. In a passionate
Time magazine piece, they called on Americans to join them in using
jury nullification as a strategy to slow down the drug-war machine.
From the article:

"[W]e offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not
solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. ... It
doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to
sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate,
paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do - and what we will do.

"If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or
federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence
presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or
intended violence are alleged, we will - to borrow Justice Harry
Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty - no longer tinker with
the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a
government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its
poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens."

Forty years after Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, the
casualties continue to mount, with no end in sight. We need to step up
our efforts to end this war at home. We have more power than we
realize. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.