" ... it is a matter of common observation, that judges and
lawyers, even the most upright, able and learned, are sometimes too much influenced by technical rules; and that those judges who are ... Occupied in the administration of criminal justice are apt, not only to grow severe in their sentences, but to decide questions of law too unfavorably to the accused. "The jury having the undoubted and uncontrollable power to determine for themselves the law as well as the fact by a general verdict of acquittal, a denial by the court of their right to exercise this power will be apt to excite in them a spirit of jealousy and contradiction... ." "... But a person accused of crime has a twofold protection, in the court and the jury, against being unlawfully convicted. If the evidence appears to the court to be insufficient in law to warrant a conviction, the court may direct an acquittal.... But the court can never order the jury to convict; for no one can be found guilty, but by the judgment of his peers." From the dissent by Gray and Shiras, Supreme Court, Sparf and Hansen v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 174 (1894).
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