Word: convicted
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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South Dakota voters are currently considering whether to allow individual juries to acquit criminal defendants accused of violating laws deemed “misguided or draconian.” This power, known as jury nullification, would base criminal convictions on juries’ judgment not only on the facts of a case, but on the soundness of the law broken. Under the proposed Amendment A, to be voted on during the November elections in South Dakota, individual defendants could confess their guilt but ask for acquittal by arguing that the laws violated were misguided. Juries would then decide whether...
...different time. The overcrowded justice system prevents many of these laws from being overturned, as more pressing cases take up the limited time of lawyers and judges alike. In practice, police and prosecutors rarely enforce outdated statutes dealing with small issues. Likewise, some juries will inevitably decide not to convict a defendant they know to be guilty—due to extenuating circumstances, belief that the law broken was unjust or any number of reasons. Relying on individual citizens to judge cases, with all the variation of opinion that implies, means that the legal system will never dispense perfect justice?...
...DIED. ROBERT KIRSCHNER, 61, forensic pathologist who collected evidence from alleged massacre sites in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to help convict perpetrators of genocide; in Chicago. Kirschner's work took him on dozens of missions on behalf of human-rights organizations and U.N. tribunals. Despite the grisly nature of his occupation, which involved sifting through human remains, he once said he was more disturbed by "trying to contemplate what goes through someone's mind that allows them to do this kind of thing...
...board specially trained in issues surrounding sexual assault” is a sure formula for depriving accused students of any semblance of fairness or rational fact-finding procedures. Such narrowly-focused boards at other universities tend to see their duty more in terms of needing to convict the accused in order to promote the “healing” of purported victims, than in terms of searching for the truth. In the real world, such specialized boards have been woeful failures because they perceive themselves more as social service agencies than as engines of justice, and civil libertarians have...
...brother Alex, 13, and that the two then set fire to their house. In the other trial, prosecutors claimed that former family friend Ricky Chavis killed King, allegedly to protect his sexual relationship with Alex. Trial watchers wondering what would happen if Chavis and the boys were convicted of the same crime never got to find out. The brothers were found guilty of second-degree murder and arson, and Chavis--to the amazement of the boys' jury--was acquitted. "I was so shocked," forewoman Lynne Schwarz told the Pensacola News Journal. She voted to let the boys off with second...