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The paper studies the history of the jury system in the United States. The major focus of the paper is to find out how and why the jury functions. How the jury reaches its decisions, what factors and which types of jurors influence decisions, how responsive the jury is to the rules of law and evidence. The paper suggests how jury system can be done better. Outline Introduction History Constitution and Federal Laws Discussion Description of the jury system Trial by jury The jury system criticism Ways to improve the jury system Suggestions analysis Conclusion The Jury System in the United States The political leaders of the American colonial-revolutionary period recognized the jury as a check on governmental oppression. They also knew that this purpose could be frustrated by the government granting the accused his trial in a place far removed from the locale of his alleged transgression: by deporting him to England to stand trial for a crime allegedly committed in the colonies.
Thus, the First Congress of the American colonies included trial by jury as one of essential rights and liberties. The Declaration of Independence denounced the Crowns puppet judges and the denial in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury. The United States Constitution twice explicitly guarantees the right insofar as federal prosecutions are concerned and, in light of Supreme Court decisions, does so again in respect to state prosecutions by way of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Today an accused is entitled to a trial by jury in following situations. If the prosecution is brought in a federal court and involves an offense for which the punishment may exceed six months, imprisonment and the defendant is prosecuted as an adult, the defendant is entitled to a trial by a jury of twelve whose verdict (either guilty or not guilty) must be unanimous. On the other hand, if the maximum punishment does not exceed six months, imprisonment or the accused is under eighteen and consents to be prosecuted as a juvenile a jury can be denied.
The size of the federal jury, while prescribed by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure is not constitutionally required. A state jury of six persons sitting in a serious offense case has been approved by the Supreme Court in language which clearly indicates constitutional approval of a federal jury of less than twelve. The requirement of unanimity of verdict in federal prosecutions is constitutionally protected according to a 5 - 4 majority of the Court. Furthermore, it is presently required by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and an additional member of the Court has stated that he would look with disfavor on a departure from that standard. State prosecutions present a somewhat different picture. As a matter of fact every state assures the defendant some form of trial by jury in serious prosecutions and the Supreme Court has held that this is constitutionally required by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if the potential punishment exceeds six months imprisonment.
However, the Court has also held that the due process clause does not require either 12 -person juries (juries of six have been approved) or unanimous verdicts (9 - 3 verdicts have been approved). So it is that we say that it is erroneous to conclude that all persons accused of crime enjoy a right to trial by jury. Many do but many do not and, of those who do, there are significant potential variations in the form in which they do enjoy it. Assuming a situation in which the accused is entitled to a jury is there a correlative right to waive it? There is a division on the question whether the right to a jury trial is solely that of the defendant. Therefore, the defendant has the unfettered right to waive it or whether the state also has an interest in trial by jury so as to allow waiver only with the consent of the prosecution or the court or both.
In the United States, where a total of approximately a million jurors serve in some 100, 000 cases annually, has remained broadly faithful to the concept of a trial by jury. Indeed, 80 per cent of the world's criminal jury trials take place here. (Abraham, 1968) The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure condition waiver on the consent of the prosecution and the approval of the court. The Rule has been sustained against an attack asserting that the right belongs solely to the defendant. However, in reaching that conclusion the Supreme Court suggested that a defendant-only approach would pass constitutional muster and there is respectable state authority to the effect that the right does belong solely to the defendant and his waiver cannot be conditioned on prosecutor approval and cannot be denied by the court.
If a defendant is entitled to a jury trial and waives it his waiver must be knowing and intelligent. Because the decision to waive is a critical one affecting a potential constitutional right the defendant should be represented by counsel in order that his waiver is effective. The elements of knowing and intelligent waiver have not been adequately articulated. Thus, there is no authority to the effect that the defendant must know all of the ingredients of a jury trial at the time of his waiver. The courts have suggested that the defendant be apprised by the court of his right to a jury and the basic consequence that in the event he embraces that right it will be the jury and not the court who will determine his guilt. While trial by jury in a criminal case may be primary to the American model of justice and by the federal and state constitutions, it is erroneous to conclude that all persons accused of crime enjoy a right to trial by jury.
The jury system can be viewed as counter-balancing this liberal bureaucratic system in those cases which are eventually contested in the Crown Court, and as upholding due process values at least to the extent that defendants are assured of an independent external scrutiny of the merits of the prosecution case. (Doran, 1995) The federal government may and many states do deny a jury trial to one accused of so-called petty crimes. The youth who is prosecuted as a juvenile is frequently denied a jury trial. Furthermore, within the Supreme Court has approved six member juries and non-unanimous guilty verdicts to the end that one must be somewhat apprehensive about the future of the institution which was created as to be a barrio between liberties of the people and the prerogatives of the Crown. Nevertheless, there is a constitutional commitment to a defendant charged with a serious offense who prefers the common-sense judgment by jury.
Like many of our legal institutions, the origin of trial by jury in criminal cases is obscure. The primary purpose of the jury is to provide the accused with a safeguard against governmental oppression: the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor; the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. It is an interposition between the accused and his accuser of the common-sense judgment of a group of fair-minded laymen, representative of a cross-section of the district in which the defendant allegedly committed the offense with which he stands accused. Therefore, procedures must be established which will produce this representative cross-section of the community. The final act of production is summoning or compelling to participate as jurors. Experience has taught that reliance on volunteers will seldom supply sufficient jurors to transact the business of the court and will never produce a true cross-section of the community.
Ironic as it may be, in order to preserve this most cherished institution of a free people, compulsory participation is necessary. The mechanics of compulsory participation are not difficult to fashion. Starting with the identifiable population of the district a representative sampling should be drawn who will be summoned for jury service. Over the years many devices have been used: volunteers, taxpayer-property owners, voter lists, telephone directories, city directories. It was doubtful that these techniques produced a true cross-section of the community. Today, under the impetus of the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, those charged with the responsibility of identifying and summoning prospective jurors have turned with increasing frequency to voter registration lists.
To save time and money it is not uncommon for the jury officials to make a periodic and random selection from the total identifiable populace of the district and then, by term of court, make a further random selection of those who will be summoned to court for service during the particular term. Otherwise, all of the population would have to be placed in the random selection device for each term of court. In certain metropolitan areas, where prospective jurors are summoned every two weeks all year, the total population of the county could not reasonably be included in the random process every time prospective jurors were needed. It is at this point in the proceeding that a defendant who believes that the selection procedures have been employed in either a constitutionally or statutorily improper manner voices his objection by way of a motion to quash or discharge the panel or venire. He asserts that because the process of initial selection was biased, he will not be able to obtain from the venire a trial jury which comports with the objective of a jury: a fair cross-section of the community. Expert testimony, a topic about which critics of the jury system have based a significant portion of their case for the jurys incompetence, again finds the jury failing to meet expectations.
Members of a jury seem to recognize that their responsibility for interpreting the facts and making a decision differs from that of witnesses who are asked to provide opinions based on expert knowledge. The jury system nevertheless provides a justification for regarding the oral adversarial trial as the centerpiece of criminal justice in common law systems, and such a system questions the need for more formal pre-trial procedures. (Doran, 1995) The juries not always follow the advice implicit or explicit in the experts testimony. For example, in a trial involving a defense of insanity to a charge of housebreaking (the case based on the famous Monte Durham trial heard originally in the District of Columbia) when the defendant was described by two psychiatrists as having a psychopathic personality with psychosis and when the defendants testimony was jumbled and non-responsive, and when his life history showed prior commitments to mental hospitals, 56 percent of the juries found the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity -- verdict consistent with the psychiatrists testimonies. But in the incest trial, only 13 percent of the juries found the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity, even though testimony provided by two psychiatrists implicitly recommended that the defendant should be so found. In the housebreaking case, a defendant who was patently insane (as determined by his behavior in other contexts, his testimony, and his prior commitments to mental hospitals) but who had committed a seemingly rational crime (stealing for profit) in an intelligent manner (breaking into an empty house in the middle of the night) was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a majority of the juries.
Are the verdicts in the case evidence of the jurys failure or inability to understand expert testimony and therefore indicative of the jurys general incompetence? I do not think so. During the deliberations the jurors discussed over and over again, Who should have the final say about what happens to the defendant, a jury...
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Research essay sample on Due Process Clause Trial By Jury
