What can be done if a jury decision is obviously wrong?

Question

Imagine this scenario.

A man is punched and is knocked to the ground. While he lies there he gets kicked to the side of the neck. He later dies in hospital.

The jury finds the defendant not guilty of murder and manslaughter.

How should the public react in such a situation?

Fruitsalad, there's only one guy.

Further, to be honest, this isn't a hypothetical.

See the link below if you're interested.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21552050-5003406,00.html

Answer 1

it happens alot..and unfortunately there pretty must is nothing that can be done...in an appeal the state could only appeal if something went wrong with the trial or the jury acted inappropiately.

Here the jury decided that either he was innocent..self defense or whatever the defense was...or it practiced jury nullification...this is where the jury decides that the law is wrong and decides to vote not guilty even though the defendant violated the law.

Lawyers generally hate jury nullification. But it is legal and is a part of the system..legal scholars are unsure of how to regulate it.

Answer 2

You can not retry someone who has acquitted for the same crime. When white southern juries would not convict whites for crimes against civil rights workers in the 60's under state law, the federal government would sometimes charge them under federal statutes for civil rights violations. But these were unusual circumstance.
If the acquittal was on grounds of race, sexual preference etc, you might get action. You should also consider the possibility that the jury thought they were charging the wrong person, not that the actions were permissible.
After reading your link I would work to get the law changed to make such cases covered under negligent homicide if it is not already. It may be a problem with the prosecutor over charging and not giving the jury a choice of what they thought was a reasonable verdict. Most people don't think it is murder if you did not intend to kill

Negligent homicide.
(1) A person commits the offense of negligent homicide if the person negligently causes the death of another human being.
(2) Negligent homicide is not an included offense of deliberate homicide
(3) A person convicted of negligent homicide shall be imprisoned in the state prison for any term not to exceed 20 years or be fined an amount not to exceed $50,000, or both.

Answer 3

The prosecutor would ask for a mistrial, if some misconduct had occurred.

The public can react however they wish, but the GP doesn't have any impact on judges or juries.

The idea behind the American court of law is that first of all, we are innocent until proven guilty (unlike other countries), and secondly, we have the right to a fair and speedy trial, the outcome that is determined by a jury of our peers.

Answer 4

I don't know if the PUBLIC can specifically do anything, but the man's wife/sisters/brothers/parents could take it to a higher court and try to really sue the man.

Answer 5

Wait a minute. WHO kicked him to the side of the neck? The guy who punched him? If so, yea, he killed the guy. If not, there are two dudes who contributed to the death of this guy.

Answer 6

If he is found not guilty, there isn't much you can do. They can't be retried if there was no misconduct because of the double jeopardy law. ///////////////////////// This just shows how s..t for brains stupid those juries are.

Answer 7

Appeal.

Answer 8

I don't think we can really do anything. That's just one downside to our legal system.