Rick Moody Quotes
I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.
Moody, Rick. "I am Rick Moody, author of Hotels of North America, The Ice Storm, etc. AMA!" Reddit, 12 Nov. 2015.
This is a very important and fundamental quotation. Jefferson, John Adams, John Jay and many other Founding Fathers told us that the jury of peers was the final arbiter of a court case. However, many modern judges and legislatures have tried to erode that principle. In most states judges instructs juries that they are the final arbiter of the facts but he/she is the final arbiter of the law and how it should be applied in the case. But the founders wanted the jury to be the final arbiters of the law as well as the facts as is illustrated here and in {640587} and {640589}. For a more modern concurring view, see {640590}.
Note that in his very definition of a Petty Jury the right of the jury to ignore the judge's instructions in criminal matters wasa assumed--not some novel idea. Jury nullification has been a part of the American Criminal Justice System from the inception of the nation.
Hiram Frederick Moody III is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought him widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into the film The Ice Storm. Many of his works have been praised by fellow writers and critics alike, and in 1999 The New Yorker chose him as one of America's most talented young writers, placing him on their "20 Writers for the 21st Century" list.
