Can a jury always convict on a lesser included charge? There is a question on movie stack exchange regarding the Few good men movie (spoilers) regarding why some people were not found guilty of first degree murder but only of a factually fully different crime. The currently accepted answer points out that in the case in question the defendants didn't commit first degree murder due to there not being premeditation nor was the death even intentional. Thus they could not be convicted of murder one and the jury acquitted. I've already heard this kind of argument before regarding for example the Zimmerman case. But looking at lesser included offenses it would seem the jury is allowed to convict on those rather than just the offense charged. Actually in the case of murder it seems that the court must instruct juries that they can find for a lesser included offense. So the question is sort of two fold: If the jury is not instructed that they can find for a lesser included offense can they do it anyway if they understand it on their own? How can there be issues with overcharging in murder trials if the jury must be instructed about the lesser included offenses? EDIT With regards to jurisdiction multiple US would be great (federal, couple state) but for choice lets say Florida.
What the jury must do A jury must follow the law it is given by a judge. A jury cannot "go rogue" and bring back a verdict on something that has not been charged and/or that the jury has not been told to consider. So, whether a jury has the option of convicting a defendant of a lesser included offense - a crime contained within a more serious crime - depends on the instructions the judge gives. Is it up to the judge and the judge alone? Not necessarily. Typically, judges must issue the lesser included offense instructions to the jury if the lesser included offense is part of the charged offense if there exists significant evidence the defendant only committed that lesser crime. So, only if the evidence supports such instructions. Further, at least in some jurisdictions, a trial judge may not instruct jurors on a lesser included offense if there has been no request to do so by the defendant. There appears to be a disagreement over what, if any, power a prosecutor should have in making such a request. One side would argue that a prosecutor would want to ask for it so that a defendant who is getting off on the larger crime doesn't skate completely free on, for example, a technicality. Another side would argue that prosecutors should not have a say because they are in fact who control which charges are submitted to the grand jury for indictment.
The plea is entered before the trial. The concession of guilt happens during trial: the lawyer acknowledges that the defendant did the crime, but argues that it should be overlooked in some way. For example, Nixon dealt with a death-penalty case where the lawyer's strategy was to admit during the trial that the defendant had killed the victim, but to use the trial to persuade them that the circumstances did not call for the death penalty. You don't get to make those arguments if you enter a guilty plea, which would then strip you of your right to a jury.
Yes Now, murder needs a definition because they are all subtly different. Let’s use the one in the new-south-wales Crimes Act 1900: Murder shall be taken to have been committed where the act of the accused, or thing by him or her omitted to be done, causing the death charged, was done or omitted with reckless indifference to human life, or with intent to kill or inflict grievous bodily harm upon some person, or done in an attempt to commit, or during or immediately after the commission, by the accused, or some accomplice with him or her, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for life or for 25 years. The only real difficulty is in the phrase “causing the death charged”. So a sensible prosecutor would charge both defendants with both deaths. A jury would find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt of one of the “death[s] charged”. The case is similar to Rogerson and McNamara who took a live Jamie Gao into a storeroom and came out with a body. Each accused the other of the murder - the jury didn’t believe either of them.
Yes The normal remedy for not receiving a fair trial or due process is the declaration of a mistrial. A mistrial legally never happened so it is up to the prosecution to decide if they want a retrial. Unless the appellant can demonstrate that no reasonable jury would have convicted on the evidence (which seems unlikely verging on impossible), the appeal will not acquit the accused.
"Precedent" refers to a finding of what the law is. A jury only finds facts, and operates (supposedly) within the meaning of the law as already established. All the jury reports is "yes" and "no" to questions of fact (with some reference to existing law): they do not report, at least in any official way "we interpret the law as saying X". So it would be impossible for a jury to "set precedent" in the case law sense. In a notorious case, they might "set precedent" in inspiring other jurors to act similarly, but this is not enforceable precedent in the way that case law precedent is. In the US, if the jury acquits the defendant, that is the end of the matter and there is no re-trial. As for the UK, I am not sure but I think that the prosecution being unhappy with the jury's decision does not create an exception to the double jeopardy rule.
One does not introduce statutes in a trial, criminal of civil. Rather, one introduces facts. The judge will present &quot;the law&quot;, and will present it in a digested form in the form of interpreted instructions to the jury about what the law says. Jurors are not required to interpret the meaning of statutes, because jurors are also not expected to know the relevant case law surrounding a statute. A party might make a motion to the judge where the argument depends in part on the wording of a statute. Then there is a standard but jurisdiction-dependent way of referring to s statute, e.g. ORS 164.015, RCW 9A.56.010. For Minnesota there are three interchangeable forms: &quot;Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 123.45, subdivision 6&quot; which is the same as &quot;MINN. STAT. 123.45 (2008)&quot; or &quot;MINN. STAT. ANN. 123.45 (2008)&quot;, which is for statutes. You have to look it up on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis – here is the answer that Minnesota gives (all legal citations).
He was indicted on many charges including 1st degree rape. So your question is why the jury returned the specific verdict, and did not convict on all charges. There is no record of the jury deliberations, so the best we can conjecture is that they didn't find the other charges to have been proven, and in lieu of a tell-tale juror, we can't know what evidence persuaded the jury. He was convicted on counts of criminal sexual assault in the first degree and rape in the third degree, but acquitted of two counts of predatory sexual assault, and it is suggested by media who make suggestions that this is because the jury did not believe the testimony of Annabella Sciorra. The crime of third degree rape (the charge involving Jessica Mann) is when a person engages in nonconsensual sex with another person. The crime of first degree rape, a charge that he was acquitted on, is when a person subjects a victim to nonconsensual intercourse through forcible compulsion, or when they are incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless. A person is guilty of a criminal sexual act in the first degree if they engage in oral or anal sex with someone who is incapable of consent, or if they use forcible compulsion. The statutes are here, §130.00 ff.
Your question is the subject of longstanding and ongoing debate that has generated countless articles and books and dissertations, so you're probably not going to get a fully satisfactory answer here. But here's the short version: Different systems operate on different assumptions. Your question suggests you are not a retributivist, i.e., someone who views sentencing as a means for taking retribution for the criminal's offenses. Some systems (most, I imagine) are built around that idea, but some view criminal sentencing primarily as a means of preventing recidivism, or as a means for achieving rehabilitation, the interests you indicated you see as more important. And even within those systems, there are still different ideas about what you're actually trying to do. Again, you've indicated that you subscribe to an intent-based system (a punishment keyed to what the criminal intended to do), but that approach competes with harm-based sentencing (punishment for the harm the criminal actually caused). While equal punishments make sense from an intent-based approach, they are less justifiable from a harm-based approach. Few would say that attempted murder inflicts the same amount of harm as completed murder, and so that system does not call for the same amount of punishment. Because there are different approaches, sentencing guidelines vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which I would classify as adopting a harm-based retributivism, treat attempts less severely than completed offenses, but other systems treat them equally.