HB 315-JURY NULLIFICATION    1:51:47 PM CHAIR KELLER announced that the final order of business was HOUSE BILL NO. 315, "An Act relating to juries in criminal cases; and providing for an effective date." He said he will not rush this bill, but there is no time for questions. The discussion will continue at a future date. 1:52:26 PM REPRESENTATIVE TAMMI WILSON, Alaska State Legislature, said HB 315 relates to jury nullification. She made the following statement: Before one is able to understand why jury nullification is a good idea, one must understand the importance of a trial by jury. Our Founding Fathers considered them to be a powerful weapon in the war against tyranny. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton wrote that trial by jury was the "very palladium of free government" and a "valuable check upon corruption." As for the concept that juries have not only the power but the obligation to nullify unjust rulings of a judge, John Adams wrote, "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." Our Founding Fathers zealously defended this right and recognized that only an informed and empowered jury could effectively protect a defendant from the potentially harmful effects of judges. Jury nullification allows citizens to have the final say on what is fair in a court of law. Therefore, jury nullification is a good idea and one supported by Constitutional principles and freedoms. REPRESENTATIVE WILSON noted that there are 27 states that have some form of jury nullification, and most of them are within their state constitutions. "New Hampshire just finished passing a jury nullification," she said. If one were to truly believe that when people join a jury, they leave all of their past experiences, all of their biases, and "everything" behind, and make their determinations only based on the judge's instructions and the testimony, then juries would be selected in the order the people arrive. But, people do take their experiences and biases into the courtroom, so "a lot of this is already going on," Representative Wilson explained. "What this bill basically says is we want the judge to give us permission to do it." 1:56:00 PM ANNE CARPENETI, Assistant Attorney General, Legal Services Section, Criminal Division, Department of Law (DOL), said the DOL has two serious concerns with HB 315. The language allows the defendant to instruct the members of a jury that they may disregard the laws as given to the judge "and to all of us by the people who make the law; that is, you. You're the people who make the law that we try and enforce to the best of our ability when we charge people with crimes." MS. CARPENETI stated that the second concern is the fact that the law will allow the defendant in a criminal case to ask the judge to disregard Alaska's rules of evidence, which have been written with a view of making a trial as fair as possible. The bill requires the evidence to be relevant, and that is already true under Alaska law, but there are various rules that try and dictate evidence that is just too prejudicial to be fair or is hearsay and not reliable enough to be introduced for consideration by the jury. However, [HB 315] allows [evidence] if it is relevant in any way-even though it might be specifically disallowed in statute or in the evidence code. "And then, it allows the state to come back and rebut that. I think that what we would find is that allowing the jury to disregard the courts [and] disregard our rules of evidence, would result in trials that are not very orderly or not very fair to either side." CHAIR KELLER set aside HB 315.