I understand the historical reasons behind a group of British lords demanding trial by jury instead of having the king decide who walk away and who has his head roll, but what’s so great about a trial by jury in the modern context? Seems to me that a panel of, say, three educated judges would arrive at much more fair conclusions than a pack of 12 schmucks who couldn’t even get out of jury duty. Juries are far too easy to manipulate emotionally, IMO. Wouldn’t our justice system be better off without them?
There are several advantages to a jury
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They understand the real world. In most part of the world, judges are the elite amongst the elite. They are the upper echelons of barristers who are the upper echelons of lawyers who are the upper echelons of academia simply because law is such a sort after profession. Judges have typically lived their entire life at well above average incomes, with the respect of the police, courts and government and considerable social clout. As a result judges are out of touch with real society. A jury brings the court back into touch with reality. While a judge might happily enforce any laws that government sees fit to pass, a jury is much more likely to understand why a starving man stealing a loaf of bread isn’t guilty of serious crime worthy of imprisonment.
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Juries bring diversity. Over most of the world judges are the products of “the system”. In the 1950s judges were overwhelmingly conservative, now they are overwhelming left leaning and activist friendly. In 40 years time who knows what they will be. It isn’t good to have to go to court with a case based on social issues when every single judge is ideologically opposed to that viewpoint. Juries, being an essentially random cross section of society, are more likely to represent the views of society as a whole and be able to see the reason behind any case.
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It makes law transparent. If trials hinge on judges, expert witnesses and lawyers, it’s going to almost instantly become opaque to the common man. To see what I mean, try watching a Youtube video of a meeting in some highly specific field like genetic engineering or quantum computing. Because everyone understands the subject to a very high level and has done a lot of research before they even enter the room, the meeting is filled with jargon and a lot of points that all experts i know aren’t worthy of discussion don;t even get mentioned. To an outsider the meeting is incomprehensible. With no jury, trials would go the same way. Even if trials were perfectly fair, the general public would never know it because we wouldn’t understand them. Juries mean that both cases have to be presented in a way that understandable by the jury, and hence by the common woman. That makes justice transparent. Without a jury a case would be as opaque a meeting of nuclear reactor engineers. Whether it was more or less fair is something only the experts wold know and the public would have to take the word of the experts within the system. A person could be convicted and not understand why. That’s not a good thing.
Juries were implemented as defence against tyranny. By requiring that any person convicted be considered guilty in the eyes of a majority of his neighbours, it meant that any *law *had to seen as just by a majority of the population, not just the elite. It was also meant to ensure that justice was transparent. It wasn’t enough walk into a courtroom and say the right incantations. By having to convince a jury and not just a judge, it forced every case to be comprehensible to the common folk. Juries still serve those purposes.
There is a grain of truth in that but also a great deal of nonsense. You can’t claim in point #1 that judges are a well-heeled elite and icons of the establishments of police, courts, and government and then turn around in #2 and claim that all of a sudden they are “overwhelming[ly] left leaning and activist friendly”. Sounds to me like some judges have been making decisions you don’t agree with, and nothing more. Nor is there any reason, getting back to point #1, that “a jury is much more likely to understand why a starving man stealing a loaf of bread isn’t guilty of serious crime worthy of imprisonment”. Why wouldn’t a judge understand that, perhaps better, because he’s seen it before? Why wouldn’t a jury, OTOH, take a dislike to the accused and decide to take a hardline law-and-order attitude?
The grain of truth in your description is that juries were instituted on the principle of being judged by your peers rather than institutions of the Crown or the government. Jury trials and trials by judge are different, each with advantages or disadvantages to the accused in different circumstances. But in all cases, the judge still retains considerable authority in matters like the admission of evidence and instructing the jury on how they are to evaluate the evidence and what they must or must not consider.
(I don’t understand why people who don’t “get out of jury duty” are schmucks. I always saw it about the same as “getting out of voting.” It’s a privilege, IMO, and a chance to make our system of law work better. Sorry for the digression.)
When I was on a jury, everyone took it very seriously. Some people were quite happy to be doing their civic duty, and other people weren’t happy, exactly, but had a sense of responsibility about it, and didn’t think “getting out of it” was honorable-- save, say, having a sick child at home, or really, truly being vital at work. Everyone was really critical of the whiny guy who wanted off because he had an exam and hadn’t bothered to make arrangements with his professor, and finally lied about his religion, by copying somebody else. On the other hand, we were all glad we didn’t have to work with him.
People who make their living being jurors would be a bad idea. Either they’d be elected, in which case, they’d be making decisions based on whether they would help them get re-elected, or they’d be hired, and then they’d be vulnerable to other kinds of corruption.
One of the reasons being on a jury (or an election board) doesn’t pay much is to keep people from doing it for the money.
All you need to do is come to St. Louis County, Missouri and look at the bizarre municipal court system where the same batch of lawyers are judges in one town, prosecutors in another and defense attorneys in a third, and anyone who happens to be a friend a lawyer can get a speeding ticket fixed (while anyone who doesn’t know a lawyer is SOL.) Spend an evening in any of these local courts and you’ll be wishing EVERY case could have a jury.
There is also jury nullification where the jury is, in effect, passing judgement not just on the defendant by applying the law, but implicitly (for better or worse) passing judgement on the law itself in its application.
See FIJA.
Emphasis added. Depends on what you put in place. Juries are like democracy-- it’s the worts system out there, except for all the others.
Having been called for jury duty a few times, a jury of my “peers” frightens me. But I’m not sure if prefer an alternative.
Lets imagine a panel of professional jurors, do we think the conviction rate would go up, down or perhaps be more accurate?
Would having a panel of experts make the successful appeal more or less likely?
It strikes me as odd that he’d have to do that. I’ve been let off of jury duty purely on the basis of being a university student.
Because civilian control of such things is worth the bumps.
In my experience, justice is best served with 12 biases/prejudices to deal with instead of just 1.
:dubious:
This would be true only if we can agree that the right has become completely unhinged.
I would like to see the use of professional jurors. The barriers to entry would be moderate; perhaps an exam about basic law and courtroom procedure which someone with a high-school level of education could clear with a bit of effort. Pay would be also be moderate, around the median wage in that area. On paper this would cost some extra money but in reality the current US system forces jurors to pay in kind with their time so it wouldn’t really be very different in terms of cost. You would still get a reasonably wide cross-section of jurors but they would be more motivated and better informed on average. I think it would be worthwhile to try out this system on a small scale and see how it works.
Judges can be schmucks too - sometimes to the point of criminality…
I got out of jury duty at 18 years old. I just acted like an idiot when the lawyers questioned me. It was a triple homicide. Took 3 12 hour days at the court house to get myself removed. In hindsight I probably wouldn’t have been chosen even if I hadn’t acted like a fool. Kind of wish I had been chosen, but at the time I thought I had better things to do than learn and experience the American justice system. You could easily tell the people who wanted to be on the jury and the people who didn’t. The ones who didn’t including myself just made claims that they didn’t believe in the idea of innocent until proven guilty, or some other obviously unamerican belief. Easy to answer questions when your portraying such a dumb belief, the dumber the answer the better. Overall it was a very diverse group who seembed for the most part to be smarter than the average bear. And the attorneys got to choose the jurors, so I assume few shmucks were chosen.
Trouble is, if they’re government employees in some sense, you have to decide if their identities should remain secret or not. If yes, we might stoke fears of Star chambers and whatnot, and if no, it invites criminal organizations to approach professional jurors with the intent to corrupt and/or intimidate. I can picture such an organization trying to get a few dozen members of the professional juror pool in their pocket, on the assumption that at least one will get randomly assigned to any particular case in which the organization has an interest.
Even barring this, your professional jurors would have to be willing to disclose details about their lives so they can be recused (assuming a recusal system is in place) from cases where they might have a conflict, i.e. the juror once worked for one of the companies involved in the pending lawsuit.
It still might be worth a try. Maybe treat it like military service - citizens get randomly “drafted” into serving as professional jurors for one year, during which they might deal with multiple cases and while some might try to go “career”, most will serve out their hitch and never look back.
And, need I add, the trick is to say you’re prejudiced against all races.
The role of the jury is a hedge against the power of the state and the political class.
Trial by jury beats trial by ordeal and trial by combat any day.