Has The Jury System Had Its Day?

[LazyGun]

The Judge seemed none too impressed with some of the questions put to him by what does seem to have been a very confused jury in the Vicky Price case.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/vicky-pryce-trial-q-can-a-juror-come-to-a-verdict-based-on-a-reason-that-was-not-presented-in-court-and-has-no-facts-or-evidence-to-support-it-8503566.html

The Jury in this case seemed to be struggling with basic english and the fundamentals of what might constitute evidence. Should this be considered a one-off failure, or should we give some serious thought to dropping juries altogether?

Herbert Spencer, an english philosopher, once described juries as " a group of 12 people of average ignorance" - In this case at least, the ignorance quotient seems to have been higher than average......

[LazyGun]

So you do not recognise any of what Jenkins is saying then Fred?

I have never served on jury- never seen the inside of a courtroom- but I can imagine that, at least in high profile or celebrity cases, the jury may very well be informed by gossip and speculation that has not necessarily been entered into evidence. I would also imagine that jurors gossiping to friends and relatives about the case they are on is pretty common, but I have no evidence to support that :)

[New Judge]

Perhaps a way forward would be for juries to have to provide “reasons” for their verdicts. Magistrates have to do this. They have to say, in open court when announcing their verdict, which evidence they accepted, which they rejected and how they came to their conclusions. Magistrates have the assistance of a trained legal advisor to help them identify the issue(s) and formulate their reasons. There is no reason why juries should not do likewise. At least all parties involved would then have some inkling as to how the verdict was reached.

[FredPuli43]

No, LG, I don't. Jurors are always told not to talk about the case to others and the reason for that. It is that only they have heard the evidence and only they can possibly judge what to make of it; someone else's opinion cannot matter, only their opinions of it matter. They are sufficiently instructed, perhaps the word is 'flattered', by this statement of their duties, how important they are as individuals, that they are not likely to depart from it. I'm sure juries take great delight in knowing that they are the judges.

Research on scientific, forensic, matters, is not new. We did have books once! But juries have in front of them a real, live, expert; confusingly, opposing ones sometimes, though generally defence ones, being scientists or medical men, have a distressing habit of ending up agreeing with the 'opposing' expert; and that has a great effect.

[FredPuli43]

How about adapting the French system ? All serious offences are tried by a jury of twelve. But it consists of 9 citizens chosen at random and the three trial judges. Their presence combines knowledge of what has to be proved with long experience of dealing with criminal cases and finding facts ; they have heard it all before in the courts; with the worldly experience and common sense of the ordinary citizens.

[LazyGun]

@NJ, Fred - I think both those suggestions of yours are worthy of merit; Juries having to explain how they arrived at their verdict would be very useful, and the idea that a jury might have individuals versed in the law and trials and so on on the jury is an interesting notion.

Does that second idea, the one from France, make it more open to possible corruption though? Again, no evidence, but I would expect that the rest of the jurors on the panel might well be influenced by their "experts", making those experts a target for bribery etc......

[FredPuli43]

Barristers, solicitors, and judges may sit on juries nowadays. A friend, a judge who sits at the Old Bailey, was on one at Southwark Crown Court. Such qualified lawyers are told that, if possible, they are not to reveal what they do for a living. He managed to avoid doing so. His only professional contribution was in easing the deliberations by "reminding" the jury what the judge said the law was. He was pleased that, for once, no optimistic counsel was going to be appealing what he said !

Why not have one qualified lawyer on every panel ? There should be just enough to go around even now when not many do criminal work. Every magistrates' court has a legally qualified clerk with each bench.

Don't think there's any history of bribing judges in the French courts. Their judges are career judges, unlike ours, who are practising lawyers beforehand, and they work their way up through the judiciary. By the time they reach jury trial level, any tendency to corruption should have been detected. After all, they start locally at a level where they are sole judges of law and fact.

[oldgreyweird]

The training given to jurors is inadequate. They should be given a full day's structured training.

[oldgreyweird]

How can you find a way to exclude morons from jury service? People could be given a basic intelligence or understanding test, but this would be an easy way for people to get out of jury service by deliberately failing the test.
The evidence is nearly all presented verbally; how do know people can hear properly? How do you know their standard of English is adequate? Do barristers deliberately over-complicate to fog the issues?

[oldgreyweird]

Maybe you need to test jurors for intelligence/ competence whilst paying an attractive rate of expenses so that people want to serve on a jury, rather than seeing it as an odious task to be avoided if possible.