Are jurors allowed to acquit because of procedural discrepancies?

Question

If there is let's say some procedural mishap that allows evidence that was not obtained legally at trial, maybe an incompetent trial attorney failed to have it excluded can jurors exclude that evidence when judging guilt or must jurors consider all evidence admitted to the trial regardless of the legality of it?

Answer 1

canada

Jurors will be told what evidence they are to consider by the trial judge. A typical model instruction is:

To make your decision, you should consider carefully, and with an open mind, all the evidence presented during the trial...

But they will also be told that it is open to them to ultimately accept or reject any of that evidence.

If an error in trial by the parties or the judge resulted in evidence improperly being left with the jury, it is not their role to correct. They will be told to accept and apply the law as described by the judge, to the evidence that was admitted.

Evidential errors (ineffective assistance of defence counsel, or an incorrect ruling by a judge) instead may be correctable on appeal.

Or course, given that a jury is free to ultimately reject any evidence, and their reasoning cannot be scrutinized, if the jury happened to fail to consider evidence because it believed it to have been improperly admitted, that would not be correctable, even though it would be an error and counter to their instructions.

A related answer explains that even though jury nullification is not a right, it is a de facto power held by the jury.

Answer 2

In the US, juries can acquit (or convict) for any or no reason whatsoever.

They will be instructed as to what they should consider (mostly the evidence), but they can do whatever they want. Note that it is strictly forbidden to tell this to juries. There have certainly been numerous people convicted based on bias and hate alone. On the acquital side, there were decades during which "no jury will convict a white man for killing a Black man" in certain parts of the country.

Here is a good article about what juries use to decide things.

Jury nullification is the term used in the US for when a jury acquits even if the evidence is against the defendant.