Doug Darrell beat the odds and walked home from his trial as a free man on Friday, a major win for the state’s new jury nullification law…Under the policy known as HB 146, the defense has a right to instruct the jury to nullify a guilty verdict if they conscientiously object to the punishment. Darrell’s attorney, Mark Sisti, based his defense around this new rule and, after the trial went to deliberation, persuaded the presiding judge to inform jurors of this power not once but twice. Given the circumstances of Darrell’s case, it took less than six hours for them to reach a unanimous verdict – not guilty on all counts. (Go to 43:42)
Facing felony drug cultivation charges for growing marijuana plants behind his house, the 59-year-old Rastafarian saw all of the charges against him dropped after jurors in his trial successfully convinced their peers to nullify the case on the grounds that Darrell was simply trying to obey the customs of his religion.
“Many of us wondered what kind of precedent this would set,” said juror and FSP participant Cathleen Converse in an exclusive interview with Free Talk Live. “But after chewing on all of the possibilities and re-reading the definition of nullification, we all decided that the only fair thing to do was to vote with our consciences and acquit the defendant of all charges.”
Read more here. (Yahoo)
