You were mixing up apples and oranges.
A civil court does not determine guilt or innocence. That's not its job.
Jury nullification is simply the (discredited) theory that the jury has the right to apply non-statutory law to the case, so that although under statute the person might be guilty, under the law the jury chooses to apply, whether it be natural law, personal concience, or something else, the person is innocent of committing a crime.
Again, we must distinguish the uses of terms. That's the problem here.
There is moral guilt and innocence.
And there is legal guilt and innocence.
This thread started, and I am continuing, on the basis of discussing legal guilt and innocence. That's what I'm discussing.
If you want to discuss moral guilt and innocence, which is not a matter of statute or law but of societal values, that's fine. But that's not what the issue is or was.
I would agree that a person can be legally innocent of any crime but considered by society to be guilty of unacceptable actions. Sure. But that wasn't the issue.
The original question, as I recall, was can a guilty person be acquitted. And the answer is, legally, no. If they're acquitted they're by definition not guilty. That's where this all came from. Sometimes it's useful to go back to fundamentals -- wouldn't you agree? |
