So ... you've actually come up with an ingenious mechanism now to ensure you'll be excluded from any McCain-Feingold-related juriy (once a prosecutor googles your name in jury selection research)!

Well, what I would actually do is, once voir dire begins and I understand that is the crux of the case, ask the judge to be moved to a different trial, as I am unfit to sit in judgement on this one. If she asks why, I would tell her my reasons, straight out.

On a tangential note, the one time that I was called for jury duty and was available (that is, in the state), I was in voir dire for a case that was a third-time drunk driving offense. When the prosecuting attorney asked if a police officer testified that the man was drunk, would that be sufficient evidence to meet the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt", I said no. I explained that the police officer was just a person after all, subject to any given human weaknesses, and though trained to observe (which gives him a slight edge in believability), it would still be just one witness against another (the defendant). The prosecuting attorney tried to have me struck, but the judge demurred. It didn't matter, though: I was too far down in the pool to be chosen to sit on the jury.

The danger, of course, is that you start getting activist juries. How is your stance different than, say, a group of jurors who are awestruck by a celebrity murderer and find him innocent?

[OK, maybe a bad example, but you get where I'm going, I hope.]

We rail against activist judges, but activist juries are more of a threat, I think.

Juries are limited by the confines of the law. The cannot sentence a person to more punishment than the law allows. You cannot, for example, sentence a man to hanging for jaywalking. If you tried, there would be a mistrial at best. And even if an activist judge were to uphold such a sentence, it would be immediately overturned on appeal.

Jury nullification — the finding of a person to be innocent because the law he broke is unjust — is a bedrock feature of our common-law system. It is a defense against unjust laws or the unjust application of laws. I will go further than my earlier statement: I consider it my duty to acquit any person for whom I am a juror, who is tried under an unconstitutional or unjust law. Were the government to pass a different law that allowed the death penalty for jaywalking, I would feel compelled to acquit were I on a jury trying a person so charged, because the law would be unjust.

Indeed, were it not for the possibility of jury nullification, there would be no need for a jury. A judge could as easily decide the guilt of a person on the basis of the law as could a jury. But only a jury has the power to stand up and say, that even if constitutionally-valid, a law or its application in this case is unjust. A judge can only decide on the basis of bad law if the law is not constitutionally valid.

The best part of this is that it acts as a safeguard on itself: if jury nullification is overused, the result is that more people are free to behave in a way that, if injurious beyond themselves, is eventually injurious to those of the jury who themselves nullified the law. It cannot be used to commit an injustice, without that injustice rebounding on those who acquit the criminal. That cannot be said of an activist judge.