I'm a little disappointed that the article doesn't mention a serious practical impediment to nullification - the "voir dire" process of juror selection. They ask you a series of questions, one of them usually being "Will you apply the law as I explain it to you?" You are 100% within your rights to answer no - they'll excuse you from the jury. If you say "yes", however, but you mean "no", then you have committed perjury. You won't get caught if you're crafty about it, but it's still a relevant detail. A more accurate title might have been: "People can do whatever they want as long as they're OK going to jail if they get caught"
I answered that I would be willing to vote guilty if the law and the facts supported such a verdict.
This is absolutely true, and I am free to nullify (without having lied) if I find the law doesn't support such a verdict.
I'm wondering though what happened to the guy in NY (came to the comments here hoping someone had tracked that down). He was arraigned in Feb of this year.
Very unlikely this would occur. Jury deliberations are considered sacrosanct in American jurence prudence. You are under no obligation to explain your reasoning to anyone when deciding a verdict. And courts have been traditionally very wary of allowing prosecutors to delve too deeply into them to go on fishing expeditions unless a very specific procedure has been shown to have been violated.
The prosecution would essentially have to read your mind to demonstrate that you somehow "lied" in answering the questions during jury selection, which is why what you're describing virtually never happens. And there's always the plausible defense that you simply changed your mind as the trial unfolded.
This sounds reasonable - but doesn't refute my main point - that nullification, while not a criminal act, can often not be applied without first committing a separate criminal act, and that one should be aware of this fact and take appropriate precautions.
This makes sense to me. Revenues scale with deposits, but many expenses scale with number of customers. Below a certain balance, the bank actually loses money on each additional checking account - better for them if you just go somewhere else. Also, the less money you have in your account, the less certain they can be of the maturity of the loan you've made them. Given they can basically borrow from the fed for free, why would they want your money?
I wondered the same thing about the third place contestant. The write-up said she measured the carcinogens in grilled chicken using a high pressure liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer. When I was in college, they would only let us use the analytic equipment in planned labs under supervised conditions. I can only imagine the response if I went to the lab manager and asked if I could put a piece of chicken in his spectrometer.
Even if this deal goes through, you'll have three national carriers to choose from and, depending on where you live, one or more regional carriers, plus VoIP. That's not pretty darn close to a monopoly at all.
I think there's a stronger case for a GSM monopoly, but at some point the argument becomes silly - where do you draw the line between an uncompetitive market and a market with product differentiation? Would you have broken up Standard Oil because they were the only ones offering Super Unleaded?
What do you mean, "a stronger case" for a GSM monopoly? There will now be one (1) GSM provider in the US. Near as I can tell, the "mono" in "monopoly" refers to "one", as well.
1=1.
This isn't a debate about how "strong" my case is. It's a monopoly in the GSM space, by definition.
First of all, below (a) is the list of mobile providers in the US. Note that, even if T-Mobile were removed, there would be more than one (1) GSM provider. So your "mono" comment is both unnecessarily snarky and wrong.
But, if you really, wanted to push it, you could probably find a way to claim that T-Mobile/AT&T had a monopoly. You could also claim that any company had a monopoly on their product, simply because the product that this company sells is going to be somewhat different than those of its competitors. Yeah, true, so what?
Ah yes, because Northeastern Alaska Sanskrit 2400-baud Modem Wireless has sooooo many subscribers. Yeah, that argument will hold up.
There are no other GSM providers of note which offer modern, up-to-date services (and handsets) and are a serious option now, besides ATT. I was snarky because I suspected obtuseness; I think that obtuseness has now been confirmed.
Of course my argument holds up. It's true by definition. But remember, my first post said that I thought there was a stronger case for a GSM monopoly.
Look, the term "monopoly" is a pretty strong word, and it carries with it certain connotations that I don't think apply here. So if you want to use it in the strictest sense of "a market with only one seller" then I agree with you, but saying that "AT&T has a monopoly on GSM mobile coverage" has about as much weight as saying "Apple has a monopoly on iPods." Yeah, true, so what?
BTW, Qo, I note your account was created 5 hrs ago, seemingly for the purpose of posting your comment above. Karma is currently 1. Do you work for ATT, by chance?
