On 8/18/2012 9:40, Warp wrote:
> Doesn't the American judicial system grant the judge the right to veto
> the jury's decision if it's clearly against the law? (In other words,

Only in the direction of innocence. If the jury says the defendant is guilty 
and the judge determines that the evidence wasn't sufficient for that 
decision, the judge can set it aside.

In particular, each law has a set of things you have to do to have violated 
that law. For example, say that to be convicted of burglary, you have to 
have been on someone else's property, you have to have taken something 
movable, and you have to have left the property with it. If the prosecution 
doesn't present at least some evidence for each of those, then the 
prosecution doesn't even have "prima facia" (initial on-the-face) evidence. 
So if the jury comes back and says guilty, then the judge can say "but 
nobody even claimed he took anything" or "nobody even claimed he went in the 
other person's house."   Of course, this is rather rare.  I'd suspect it 
only happens in situations of weird politically-motivated trials, like 
Assange might have or something.

On the other hand, if the jury comes back and says not guilty, the judge 
can't say "well, *I* think he's guilty, so off he goes."  The jury said he 
didn't do at least one of the things on that list, so he's innocent, and 
it's the jury's job to make that decision, not the decision of the judge.

The judge can throw it out, because he can decide it was essentially a trial 
that never should have happened given the amount of evidence the prosecution 
lawyer was able to present. The judge can't say "sorry, jury is wrong and 
he's really guilty", but he can say "sorry, jury is wrong and they never 
should have heard any of this in the first place."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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