Jacob Appelbaum in Germany

[Bill Stewart]

At 05:16 PM 1/8/2014, coderman wrote:
>in the US court system, is there an equivalent of jury nullification
>applied to a judicial ruling?
>
>that is to say: is it possible to plead guilty, but a judge acting to
>nullify a perceived unjust law, could find you not guilty?

A judge who wanted to do that could dismiss the case instead of 
asking for a plea.

IANAL, but I suspect that a judge who allows a case to get as far as 
asking the defendents how they plead isn't going to reject a guilty 
plea.  Another way to do what the Quakers wanted to do would have 
been to plead "no contest" instead of guilty, but I'm sure they had 
deeply considered what to do beforehand.