Jury nullification occurs when a jury in a criminal trial returns a not guilty verdict despite clear evidence that the defendant broke the law. Nullification is not part of the criminal procedure, but it does happen for various reasons. The jury may believe that a law is unjust, the sentence is excessive, or the entire criminal justice system is unfair to marginalized groups.

On July 7, in Portland, Oregon, Gary Edwards, a 43-year-old home­less Black man, stabbed Gregory Howard Jr., a 43-year-old homeless White man. A silent recording showed Howard sitting on a bench. Edwards, who held a folding-blade knife at his side, approached How­ard from behind. Howard jumped to his feet and pushed Edwards away.

The two men began to scuffle, and Howard was stabbed in the shoulder. Private security body cameras captured Howard yelling a racist slur while a medical team treated him after the stabbing. Howard used the N-word after the stabbing, not before.

Both men had a criminal record. Edwards received a three-year sentence for a 2020 stabbing, while Howard was convicted of felony rape of a child in 1997. Edwards was charged with sec­ond-degree assault. He faced five years in state prison.

Prosecutors convinced the court that Edward’s pattern of violence posed an ongo­ing public safety risk.

Edwards remained in jail until his recent trial.

Edwards testified that he ap­proached Howard and proposed a trade. He offered to exchange his knife for cigarettes. Howard then shoved him and yelled a racist insult, so he acted in self-defense.

Oregon is not a “Stand Your Ground” state, but it does have laws allowing people to use non-deadly force for self-defense without having to retreat in certain circumstances. In other words, if a person is in a place where they have a right to be and reasonably believe they are under imminent threat of unlawful physical force, they are not legally obligated to flee before defending themselves.

With that said, one would expect the defense to claim that How­ard started the fight by shoving Edwards, that Edwards had no obligation to flee, and that the stabbing was the result of Edwards attempting to stop Howard’s vio­lence toward him. Instead, the defense claimed that the key evidence was the recording of Howard after he was stabbed. The defense argued that Howard’s use of the N-word reflected his true feelings about Edwards, then asked the jury,

“What other than racism could explain why Mr. Howard perceived hatred, animosity, and aggression from a complete strang­er?” The defense asked the jury to consider how racial hostility, whether perceived or spoken, can influence a confrontation.

Why did the defense use the sec­ond argument instead of the first?

According to Legal Clarity, Oregon’s self-defense laws do not extend to situations where the individual is the initial aggressor. A person who provokes unlaw­ful physical force can only claim self-defense if they back off and communicate that they are stand­ing down, yet the other person continues or threatens force. Additionally, under Oregon law, the force used in self-defense must be proportionate to the perceived threat, meaning it should be a level of force that the individual reason­ably believes is necessary for their defense. This principle of propor­tionality ensures that self-defense actions are not excessive given the circumstances.

The defense attorney believed he could only persuade the jury that Edwards was protecting himself and that the stabbing was propor­tionate if he portrayed the defen­dant as a victim of racism. The prosecutor rejected the defendant’s self-defense framing of events and told the jury that the racist slur was immaterial because offensive language spoken after the fact cannot retroactively justify the defendant’s actions. The prosecutor claimed that Edwards caused the situation by being the aggressor from the outset. Edwards did not fear for his life. He did not retreat. He “sauntered up—and he sauntered away after he stabbed someone.” After deliberation, the jury found the defendant not guilty. Right-wing influencers were appalled. Andy Ngo wrote, “Jury nullification: A Portland, Ore., jury acquitted a violent Black career criminal who admitted to stabbing a White man because the victim used the N-word after being stabbed. The defense argued that the stabbing was self-defense against racism.” Sean Fitzger­ald argued that the idea that the N-word can be used as a “deadly threat” to justify stabbing someone sets an “asinine precedent.” However, a reporter for Survival World, a website that analyzes the legal issues of self-defense, argued that the right-wing influences only looked at the case from the victim’s perspective and ignored the role of reasonable doubt.

According to the reporter, jurors were not asked if they approved of stabbing a racist; rather, they were asked if the state had eliminated all reasonable possibilities that Ed­wards might have feared a violent attack from someone who immedi­ately rushed to his feet and shoved him. Although several jurors found the cigarette-trade tale implausi­ble, the prosecution did not con­vince them to convict.

If that was the case, no one should be appalled by the not-guilty ver­dict.

On the other hand, what did the defense attorney want each juror to think when he encouraged them to “consider how racial hostility—whether perceived or spoken—can shape a confrontation”? Was he hinting at the “Black Rage Defense”? The Black rage defense is a legal strategy that argues a defendant can’t be held criminally responsible if the defendant’s actions are influ­enced by the psychological trauma of the historical mistreatment of African Americans in a racist soci­ety.

In other words, Edwards “blacked out.”

If this legal strategy influenced the jury’s decision not to convict, we should all be appalled by the ju­ry’s reasoning, not the verdict itself.

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