It is not only {the juror's} right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
[-- John Adams, 1771]
Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction... if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong.
[-- Alexander Hamilton, 1804]
It is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
[-- Thomas Jefferson, 1782]
It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumbable, that the court are the best judges of the law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your {jury} power of decision.
[-- Chief Justice John Jay, 'Georgia v. Brailsford', 1794]
Petty juries, consisting usually of twelve men, attend courts to try matters of fact in civil causes, and to decide both the law and the fact in criminal prosecutions. The decision of a petty jury is called a verdict.
[-- Noah Webster, Dictionary, 1828]
In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction.
[-- Maryland State Constitution]
In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.
[-- Indiana State Constitution]
The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.
[-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'Horning v. District of Columbia', 1920]
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.
[4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 'US vs Moylan', 1969]
{The jury has an} unreviewable and irreversible power... to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law.
[D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 'US vs Dougherty', 1972]
