While I get your concern, that sort of undermines having a jury of your peers. If we're solely judging by what the law says, why not just have a group of judges decide? Or voted-for representatives?

It being your peers is a counter balance to the power of bad laws being passed and providing the public a way to push back (when things are incorrect).

While you simultaneously (and fairly) worry about the will of the majority being able to run roughshod, I'd say that ability in the context of a jury is decently limited so the ability for a jury to rule this way provides a sufficient check on possible bad laws.

I'm not sure you understand what the law is.. The law is not a book of rules, it does not exist independently from its creators, it is the will of the people. If the people find someone not guilty, they're not guilty. The law was invented by people and only exists to be an extension of the will of the people.

If ten people from a representative section of the population thinks someone is guilty or not guilty, that is the law. It doesn't matter whether they did something or not, what they are deciding is whether they should be punished for it or not. That's why there is a jury in the first place, otherwise you'd have a system based on accuracy, not on argument.

Do you think that if a government made a law criminalizing having brown skin that a jury has a moral imperative to find brown people guilty?

I think the point of a jury is to apply justice to the legal system, and in fact their moral imperative is to acquit people who face unjust applications of the law or are victims of government oppression.

The article does point out that the victim had been imprisoned for 6 months at that point. That's already disproportionate punishment for writing a slogan with washable paint on the likeness of some genocidal cunt. Would he have been put through that if he'd written some other message? I doubt it.

I suppose jury could say it's an improvement, not a damage. Or that 7k is ridiculous and hence throw out the case.

Yes that is what protest law is. You are not understanding free speech and the right to protest lol.

No doubt the sentencing of the Palestine Action activists influenced the outcome here. In that case the jury convicted them of criminal damage and the judge used that to sentence them as terrorists. Pulling a bait and switch like that has consequences. The intended consequence was to intimidate protesters into silence. The actual consequence was to destroy confidence in the legal process. This jury knew that any guilty verdict would give the judge free rein to do the same trick, and they knew what an injustice that would be. The jury did the right thing, given that they were acting within a broken system.

The people have spoken, Javert, and that’s how the law works.

Killing factory owners is how we got the eight hour work day. Progress is not made by doing as you are told. Sometimes (most of the time) the system is wrong and breaking a part of it is what fixes that part of it. Governments should be for the people, and the people have spoken.