• Could a jury acquit Trump even if they know he’s guilty?

• That’s what prosecutors charging him in his election interference case suggested.

• Prosecutors asked the DC judge to bar Trump from bringing politics into the courtroom.

Prosecutors charging former President Donald Trump in his election interference case raised the specter of “jury nullification” — the idea the jury could determine Trump was guilty but acquit him anyway — in a new legal filing.

Special Counsel Jack Smith urged the DC judge overseeing Trump’s criminal trial to bar the former president from bringing up politics in the courtroom.

Trump has said he’s innocent and railed against prosecutors, claiming that President Joe Biden has ordered them to prosecute him in order to help Biden win the 2024 election.

“Biden’s Flunky, Deranged Jack Smith, should go to HELL,” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Tuesday. “He is helping his Corrupt and Incompetent President to destroy America through Weaponization and ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

Smith wrote in a filing to federal judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday that the allegations against him are “baseless” but could entice a jury to side with Trump during his trial.

“The defendant has made clear his intent to introduce evidence and make arguments that are improper,” Smith wrote.

Smith urged Chutkan to prevent Trump from bringing up politics and allegations that his prosecution is politically motivated in court.

“Significantly here — where the defendant repeatedly has levied baseless political claims — evidence or argument that serves only to support a jury nullification argument has no relevance to guilt or innocence and must be excluded,” prosecutors said in the court filing.

What is jury nullification?

Jury nullification is when a jury disregards evidence in a case or refuses to apply a law to “send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself” or show that the law is contrary to the jury’s “sense of justice, morality, or fairness,” according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.

Jury nullification was used before the American colonies became what’s now known as the United States, when colonists ignored laws to protest British rule.

Before the American Civil War, northern juries used nullification to ignore the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which ordered authorities in northern states to return enslaved people to their owners in the South if they escaped.

During Prohibition, some juries refused to enforce laws banning alcohol, according to Doug Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Law.

However, the practice is legally controversial. The Legal Information Institute says there’s nothing in the law sanctioning nullification, and juries are not informed it’s an option. It’s instead up to a jury’s discretion, the institute wrote.

Some have been punished for raising awareness of jury nullification. In Colorado, two men who handed out pamphlets praising jury nullification were arrested and charged with jury tampering.

But the state’s supreme court sided with them because they didn’t hand out the fliers directly to jurors in a specific case, according to the Denver Post.

While it’s unlikely that jurors in Trump’s case would use nullification to protest the law he’s being charged under, Smith’s latest filing shows prosecutors are apprehensive that a juror may be swayed by Trump’s allegations that he’s being unfairly targeted — and let him off the hook.

Read the original article on Business Insider