In my laymen understanding of common law it should be possible for the jury in the murder trial against the murderer of the United Health CEO to be acquitted of the charges if the jury finds him not guilty. From Wikipedia:
In the United States, jury nullification occurs when a jury in a criminal case reaches a verdict contrary to the weight of evidence, sometimes because of a disagreement with the relevant law.[1] It has its origins in colonial America under British law. The American jury draws its power of nullification from its right to render a general verdict in criminal trials, the inability of criminal courts to direct a verdict no matter how strong the evidence, the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause, which prohibits the appeal of an acquittal,[2] and the fact that jurors cannot be punished for the verdict they return.[3]
It does seem tho that the selection of the jury in the state of New York is heavily controlled to select individuals that want to vote according to the law instead of emotional sense of justice. Here is a viral tweet about pretending one does not even know what Jury nullification is:
Hello New York: the first rule of jury nullification is: you do not talk about it. You have never heard of that. You DO NOT talk about it. The second rule is, no matter WHAT a judge says: it is YOUR decision that is BINDING. If you say not guilty, that's the ballgame
One could argue here if that's right or wrong. On one hand, taking jurors that actually believe in the law seems like a common sense basic fundamental. On the other hand taking any bias in is against the the underlying democratic values why jury trials even exist.
One could even go that far and say vox populi vox dei is the reason why jury trials exist, it was created to weigh a sense of justice over laws written on paper. Which is crazy because it would imply the British wanted to legalize a murder if it's very popular - crazy, not my words, just a possible extreme interpretation of the underlying values in common law.
With that said, here are my wild guess predictions what will happen
- Murder acquitted. The healthcare system is very hated in the US by both the right and the left for different reasons. You can see this by the insane ratios of United Health Facebook post: it seems like out of millions of views there were only a two digit number of people having sympathy with the victims family. This is less than one would expect missclicks. Very hard to find an un-emotional jury here.
- Pay of CEOs in all fortune500 companies but especially in healthcare sector dramatically increase over the next 5 years. This is the opposite of what the populous out there wants. These economics are always a function of risk and reward. Any risk to physical life and liberty increases pay. Acquitted basically means that there is some percentage chance that murdering a CEO can be legal if it's particularly popular... or at least that's it will be the talking point used to justify pay raises.
Please tell me in the comments if this is possible, if there is a flaw in my logic here or if would see point (2) coming here too