Remember, it's a jury trial. You can only blame the total technical illiteracy outside of the career professionals in the field, and the judge maybe only for allowing that circus in the courtroom.
No but a judge can hold you in contempt if they believe you aren't basically being a genuine jury member. So lets say slavery was legal and you found it immoral. Youre in a court case over a slave that ran away. You want to find the assumed slave as not guilty because you're an abolitionist. A judge will hold you in contempt because you didn't follow the law that slavery was legal.
That's how stupid the system is. It's intentions initially were good, but nowadays it's really just made it apparent that it was for protecting affluent aristocrats from the government. Not to promote freedom for the citizens.
You can be held in contempt for trying to pursue jury nullification and urging other jurors as well.
Jury nullification is if everybody individually agreed the law is bad. But even so, a judge can request a retrial with a new jury. And your noble effort has been ruined.
Having worked for more than a decade as a jury consultant on high profile patent lawsuits, I disagree. Big verdicts are mainly attributable to lawyering and the extent to which the judge construes the patent language.
