Here’s a ~30 year old excellent law article on jury nullification by James Joseph Duane, who is also somewhat well known for his excellent “Don’t talk to police” lecture on YouTube. Click through the SSL warning in that first site to get the pdf - I think that’s better than the JSTOR library-login-wall link but you can see it there too.

It’s a pretty comprehensive positive treatment on jury nullification, with a bunch of history and context, well worth your time.

CGP Grey’s video offers both explanation and examples, and helps explain why Americans mostly don’t know about the topic. i.e. it was used by people in the North to protect slaves running away, but also by people in the South doing lynch mob activities - either way, it reflects a breakdown of all of society and complete and utter lack of trust in the governing bodies, and a lifting up of personal preferences above the needs of society, to the point of even lying to a judge to accomplish the end goal.

i.e., totally setting aside right vs. wrong, there is a process by which things are most helpful to happen - e.g. voting, and in this case a trial by jury - and this topic completely bypasses that process. In short, it claims that the end justifies the means.

And that is a very dangerous topic indeed. As with the mod on LW, who gets to decide those ends - the Christian God? And who speaks in His place then, you?

The example that comes to mind for me, an Australian, is the Camden 28. They were a group of anti Vietnam war protestors who were acquitted after the jury gave not-guilty verdicts despite clear evidence against them.