Juries

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What does everyone think of the current legal system concerning Jury trials?

Ive sat on 3 juries and as I said in the other thread, juries are stupid. They are picked randomly from the areas electoral register, so, anyone on the register can be on a jury.

Because they are 'regular' joes, many of them go into a trial convinced of guilt and vice versa. One of my trials was a rape, and there were 4 male jurors and 6 female jurors the women, even before hearing the defence were convinced that the guy was guilty. Thank god that the Judge has executive power, the guy was clearly innocent (he had been seen on CCTV at the same time in another town, the only evidence was a hair from the victims clothing and the guy openly said that he had met the girl before), the judge disbanded the jury and had a new one sworn in.

Should there be more control over who can sit on a jury? Finishing school would be one of the simple factors I would like to see, but then I would go further and require that a jury be made up of more learned people such as doctors, nurses and teachers to name a couple of professions.

 

I don't remember who said it, but this quote has always stuck with me.

 

I think it's weird. The courts make a big effort not to be partial, especially not to be swayed by public opinion. And then they round up a group from the public, expecting them to make impartial and fair judgements. It's like trying to introduce an element of democracy into a system that neither needs or benefits by it. Majority rule is public opinion.

 

I must confess I've been thinking about this subject a little.

On the one hand, it may seem an attractive idea to limit the jury to people of some education - or even some standing. But what then? The very idea of a jury, I guess, is to counterweigh the judge's professional preparation (except in the states where he has none because he's an elected non-lawyer). To prevent the judge from flying off the handle and bending the reality of life to legal sophistry, a group of "reasonable persons" is chosen - at random, actually - to put in a factor that will keep justice close to home. It might be a freedom thing, even. That is, as long as your neighbours don't hold you guilty, you don't go to prison on the magistrate's power.

You've witnessed a lot of jury bias or even idiocy on occasions. On the other hand, here in a civil law system, I could tell you about some stuff judges come up with that no normal person would allow to happen. In criminal trials, we actually have "benchers", who are essentially lay judges who can't preside. They always - if present - outnumber the professional judge or judges, who, however, is entitled to give them some non-binding instruction (generally explaining the law to them is probably the focal point of it). I've heard a bad story of one such trial and as a rule, those lay judges are referred to as "sleepies", which is quite telling. On the other hand, one of our Chief Justices of the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court, had been a bencher for like 20 years (being an academic lawyer, though), so...

It's a bad thing that they are influenced by the crime itself to such a degree that they won't be impartial enough to give the facts an unbiased evaluation. On the other hand, they actually have human reflexes and that might be good in many cases. Reason is a good thing in law and those lay people represent the reasonable person standard. They're supposed to induce common sense in there. If they take their duty seriously, they can do many good things.

 

I most certainly don't support educational qualifications for juries. We don't have the same kind of juries as the US or UK but pretty similar to that of what Chev described with "benchers". The entire point of the system is to gather people from all layers of society to get a layman's view of justice. If we set educational qualifications for such duties we would miss the entire point of the system. It does not take a college degree to separate right from wrong.

However there's the question if the juries are necessary at all. The Finnish minister of justice has proposed that we scrap the benchers since they are not worth the effort. Personally I'm not sure how I feel on the issue, I probably don't know enough about the system right now to make proper assessments. However I do think it's important to prevent the justice system from becoming too much separated from the ordinary people and therefore it's good to have people involved who don't have a law degree. Wether or not the risk is great enough to justify the costs? That, I'm not completely sure of.

 

In the US, juries were first established as a protection from a very corrupt system in the UK at the time. A magistrate could basically jail anyone for any reason with little if any oversight, and more than a few of them did. Remember that the histoical accuracy of Sweeney Todd is argued by historians specifically because it was realistic at the time.

As for how the system has evolved, the problem I have with it is that lawyers tend to bias the system toward the less inteligent and wise. They want the juries to be as influencable as possible. To that effect, they throw out anyone of any serious education. My father, a psychologist, has been called up for jury duty several times. He's usually the first one objected to by someone, even without any questions other than profession asked. He's never actually served on a jury. I imagine the same is usually true of doctors, college professors, and just about any professional.

I think one way of solving this may be to restrict the ability of the lawyers to object to jurists so that there must be cause given. As it is I think each lawyer can object to 3 jurists without giving any reason at all, and that's part of the problem.

 

In the UK, juries are completely random, unless it can be proven that a jury member has personal interest in the case.

I wouldnt say that I want educational qualifications, just proof of competance.

 

A jury is supposed to be a jury of your peers. If the person on trial is an idiot, shouldn't the jury also be idiots?

 

I don't know about some of the other comments here, but I'd like to see Canadian juries go to a system wherein it takes only 9 of the 12 jurors to reach a decision. This horse puckey about it having to be unanimous flies in the face of common sense.

In addition, I think juries should have some sentencing powers. They should also be allowed to hear evidence that the defense lawyers deem "prejudicial", but that common, normal, decent citizens deem "important" -- things like "does he have a criminal record a mile long?" and "has he raped little children before?" I've heard all the legal claptrap about "oh, past bad behaviour shouldn't be used as evidence on current charges, that's not faaaiiiir" but I think that's complete and utter horse <bleep>. If I'm wondering "could this man have committed this awful crime?" I think it is very helpful to know the truth about his past, as in "it is a known fact that he committed this crime 12 times in the past." I know the lawyers on here will jump on me for this, but this in one case where I agree with old Billy Shakespeare when he said "The law is an <donkey>" *

*editted for the delicate members of SP!!

 

I think Finnish law requires them to be respectable citizen and they are chosen by the muncipial council anyhow and I doubt they choose homeless alcoholic bums to the duty, nor do I think such persons are very interested to serve in such duties. Also the law states that they can't have legal education, which is the point of the system. They are not meant to be lawyers quite on the contrary. However as stated above our system is quite different from juries and their primary purpose might also differ somewhat.

 

Its funny you should say that, the first jury I sat on was a burgulary, and we were very hmm, about wether or not he was guilty, in the end it was DNA which made up our minds. After our verdict the judge read out his history, and not a single juror walked out of that room thinking we had done the wrong thing.

 

Probably off-topic, but I'm curious. Do you recuse yourself from weak cases in which your obviously guilty or liable client refuses to settle?

 

That caught me a bit by surprise. In Canada (or at least in my home province of Manitoba), lawyers are ineligible to serve on juries; in fact, spouses of lawyers are also ineligible (my wife is a lawyer, so I’m automatically off the hook). I suppose the idea is that lawyers aren’t qualified to be reasonable laypersons.

 

LKD, I think you have to be careful when considering past deeds. If the character of the defendant comes up, I definitely think any past history is open to review, but if not, it's a difficult topic. Many people may be conviced simply because they're not nice people, rather than because they actually committed that particular crime.

 

Overview on Germany: At the lowest level we do have the Schöffengericht which consists of two Schöffen and a single judge. They sit over crimes and misdemeanors that carry a punishment of no more than four years in jail. Schöffen are an advisory jury; they advise, but have no decision authority; Lawyers are not allowed to be Schöffen. We do have the Kleine Strafkammer at the Landgericht for felonies with two Schöffen and a judge. For serious crimes we do have the Große Strafkammer which usually consists of a panel of three judges, and two Schöffen. For capital crimes, like murder and manslaughter and other crimes involving death, we have the Schwurgericht, which always consists of a panel of three judges, and two Schöffen. There are no Schöffen at the higher courts Oberlandesgerichten and the Bundesgerichtshof.

We do have Schöffen only in criminal law. The Schöffen are being retained in criminal courts largely for tradition. Judges report that their impact is minimal. There is generally a perception in Germany that Schöffen, like juries in general, are simply overburdened when it comes to the complexity of many cases, which is why in civil law they in Germany don't exist anymore, except for cases regarding trade law.

As I have said in another thread, I read that companies in the US now prefer to agree that potential conflicts be settled in court without juries. I don't find it hard to see why. There are matter of contract law that are complicated and demanding to understand even for experts with years of training. Where professionals struggle, amateurs are lost. Trying to explain the matter to amateurs costs time, and involves the risk of nuance getting lost in translation. Also, there have been indications that in cases involving non-American plaintiffs US juries tended to 'rule patriotically', that is, in favour of American parties. Companies don't want 'wild cards' in contract enforcement. The price for not using juries is a degree of 'loss of contact' with the people, but the gain in professionality, speed, unity, predictability and reliability of norm application is considered worth it.

 

I guess in some cases you regret having a jury, while in others you regret not having one. I suppose juries would be good in administrative courts, but no such thing here (i.e. no "benchers"). I would very much like a jury or at least a couple of benchers, in a case involving an administrative authority that's being mean but claiming it's legal.