truepenny | Peter Watts has been convicted.

I am sick to death of my country being demonstrably stupid and evil.

I agree with Dr. Watts' assessment that judge, jury, and lawyers were all doing their best; I also agree with the juror quoted on Derryl Murphy's blog, who suggests that the wrong person was on trial. And I agree whole-heartedly with

coffeeem, who points out that the jury had a tool they didn't know about. I'd never heard of jury nullification, and I'm an allegedly educated adult American who has, in fact, been summoned to jury duty (although I was not selected to serve on a jury). What's more, this falls into that dangerous category of "shit I didn't know I didn't know"--I would never have thought to try to educate myself on the subject because I didn't know my knowledge was incomplete. Even if the Fully Informed Jury Association website does sound a little Libertarian for my tastes, it is unfortunately clear that they have a point.

I've turned comments off, because I don't think I can participate in a rational discussion on this subject, and I don't need or want to feed either my own irrationality or anyone else's.