If you overthink it like that, then you’re just digging yourself into a hole that could get you in trouble.
Jury nullification is more of a Zen thing: this defendant definitely did what they are being accused of, but it’s not right for them to be convicted for it. That’s all there is.
Oh, sorry, when I was called for jury duty, there was a dress code that excluded t-shirts.
Maybe a tunic, then?
Not exactly. There is no law on the books that says anything about jury nullification, but it is customary in Common Law, which is not fully codified the way Civil (Roman) Law is. So it’s basically fundamentally embedded in the legal framework laws exist within and the jury system.
A good example of nullification at work was when the people who toppled the statue of slaver Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, were prosecuted by a vengeful Tory government that never met a British imperialist or racist they didn’t like. The Colston Four were acquitted by the jury:
Keep in mind jury nullification is not always a positive. It was used in the Deep South to shelter the KKK and people (in the loosest possible meaning of the term) like the murderers of Emmett Till.
My understanding is that jury nullification has been upheld, while steps to prevent it have been punished. So while it’s case law, it’s definitely law. If a judge explicitly orders jurors against jury nullification, they (the judge) are in trouble.
like this?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/09/us/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-no-indictment-reaj/index.html
They can’t read your mind
It’s only perjury if you get caught.
Correct. There is case law and precedent surrounding it in the U.S.
Not really. As others have said it’s simply that one or more people on the jury decide for whatever reason that they will not vote to convict even though pretty much everyone else thinks they should.
Jurors can decide to convict or not based on whatever the hell they want.
We hope they do it based on a sufficient understanding of the law and the evidence but if they do it because it’s a Tuesday and they don’t want to send anyone to jail on Tuesdays that is their business and theirs alone. Likewise unfortunately if they decide to convict because “they all do that kind of stuff” or whatever.
Bear in mind that at the point of being asked you’d know very little about the case.
I would suggest it is more likely that you would consider that there might be circumstances in which you would be able to apply the law and circumstances where you would not.
In that case you can happily answer that you would not be unable to apply the law and that you could disregard your notions of what the law is or should be without lying.
You’re not saying you definitely will do that but you could.
Ultimately I’d say if, at the stage of jury selection, you genuinely can’t conceive of any circumstances where you’d be able to apply the law, then you should probably say so and ideally spend however much of the rest of your life it takes campaigning to have those laws amended or removed.
This principle actually goes back to Cromwell
Trial by jury then had its great champion – John Lilburne (1614–1657) – ‘Freeborn John’ as he was known to his ‘Leveller’ followers. Cromwell twice had him tried for treason and each time Lilburne relied on Coke’s Institutes and Magna Carta to persuade the jury – his peers from London’s tradesmen – to fulfil their historic role and save him from death at the hands of the government which he had criticised. After finding him ‘not guilty of any crime meriting death’, the jurors were threatened by the Lord Chancellor and required to explain their verdict: they refused. Later, in 1670, a jury at the Old Bailey declined to obey the judge’s direction to convict two Quakers, William Penn (1644–1718) and William Mead, despite having them locked up for days without food or fire or chamber-pot. The Court of Common Pleas, who heard the jury’s appeal, was forced to acknowledge that the right to trial by one’s peers, as stated in Magna Carta, entailed a right to acquit, irrespective of the judge’s view that the defendant was guilty.
https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-and-jury-trial
“This is not a T-shirt, your honour. It is a short-sleeved collarless pull-over dress shirt. All the rage on the Continent.”
Good info for one exploring all the options of how one can engage in bad faith in the physical, 3D world.
I think there is a simpler way to explain why it isn’t the paradox you are suggesting.
The jury is responsible for deciding whether the defendant has violated the law or not. He hasn’t violated a law simply because he has been charged with violating a law. The evidence and the arguments might suggest he has, but until the jury renders a decision, he isn’t violating the law (see Schroedinger, et al 
).
So your notion that jury nullification isn’t upholding the law is a logical fallacy. It isn’t not upholding a law, since the defendant isn’t guilty of violating the law if the jury decides he isn’t.
Which, to follow this train of thought is what has led to people being executed for crimes of which it was shown that they were innocent because they had been found guilty by a jury. (Here’s looking at you, Texas)
Yes. Logical doesn’t mean true. Truth is based on evidence and reality.
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