At 05:16 PM 1/8/2014, coderman wrote:
in the US court system, is there an equivalent of jury nullification
applied to a judicial ruling?
that is to say: is it possible to plead guilty, but a judge acting to
nullify a perceived unjust law, could find you not guilty?
A judge who wanted to do that could dismiss the case instead of
asking for a plea.
IANAL, but I suspect that a judge who allows a case to get as far as
asking the defendents how they plead isn't going to reject a guilty
plea. Another way to do what the Quakers wanted to do would have
been to plead "no contest" instead of guilty, but I'm sure they had
deeply considered what to do beforehand.
