Court Rules Judges Responsible for Searching Out Biased Jurors

NEW YORK — Judges must root out jurors who use personal beliefs about race, ethnicity or anything else to disregard the law in deciding a case, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that judges have a duty to stop jurors from ignoring the law by issuing firm instructions or even dismissing jurors.

“A presiding judge possesses both the responsibility and the authority to dismiss a juror whose refusal or unwillingness to follow the applicable law becomes known to the judge,” the ruling said.

The three-judge panel said the “rule we adopt applies with equal force whether the juror’s refusal to follow the court’s instructions results from a desire to nullify the applicable law or . . . from a perceived physical threat or from a relationship with one of the parties.”

The practice of disregarding the law to achieve a verdict is known as “nullification.” The panel noted that it has occurred in cases throughout history, including that of John Peter Zenger, the publisher of the New York Weekly Journal who was acquitted of criminal libel in 1735, and in 19th century acquittals in prosecutions brought under fugitive slave laws.

Tuesday’s ruling resulted from an Albany drug case in which a federal judge dismissed the only black juror from a trial in which all the defendants were black. The judge found that the juror was ignoring the evidence in favor of his own preconceived ideas.

The judge concluded that the juror’s “motives are immoral, that he believes that these folks have a right to deal drugs. . . . And I don’t think he would convict them no matter what the evidence was.”