This essay is a summary and analysis of the article Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System, by Paul Butler. It includes identifying the main arguments and thesis of the article, and analyzing the validity of the author’s claims. Additionally, this essay provides a critique of the support the author provides in his article. The author, Paul Butler, is a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington, specializing in race relations law and criminal theory. He was also a Special Assistant United Sates Attorney in 1990, and was involved in the prosecution of former District of Colombia mayor Marion Barry. This article is questioning what role race should play in black jurors’ decisions to acquit black criminals in criminal cases. Butler believes that the black community would be better off if there were other means of punishing black offenders than incarceration, which is detrimental to their families and communities. Additionally, the author wants to emphasize the importance and power of black jurors in criminal cases, and bring awareness to the oppression of race in the American criminal justice system. The author uses his experience as a prosecutor and examples of prior criminal cases, such as the O.J. Simpson case, to identify and…show more content… To be more specific, whether or not black jurors are justified in nullifying a case based on race, because jury nullification “…is subversive of the rule of law”. The second argument, closely related to the first one, is the reasoning that the rule of law is unsound, and therefore jury nullification is justified. The third argument is the morality of jurors disobeying unjust criminal laws in order to achieve a desired outcome. Finally, the last argument in the article is the democratic effects of jury nullification, and its political
