Does Trail By Jury Need Reform Essay

Does Trail By Jury Need Reform. Essay, Research Paper

Question: How far do you agree with the proposal that trial by jury should be radically reformed. (note this is an English law essay)In the last year a number of legal reforms have been proposed by the current government. Firstly there are the Mode of Trial Bills, currently No. 2 is going through it.s readings. No.1 failed to make it through the hose of Lords. Then there is the Auld report that recommends a radical restructuring of the court system and cutting down on the number of cases that are tried by the Crown Court.

One area that all of these projects seek to reform is trial by jury as it is claimed to expensive, open to abuse and time consuming for all parties involved.

There is no historical right to trial by jury. The Magna Carter makes no reference to it, popular misconception not withstanding. Its first occurrence in a recognisable form can be seen the twelfth century, during the reign of Henry II. Here the jury consisted of the accused friends and neighbours rather than today.s dozen randomly selected adults. Previous to this the jury was a Norman convention made up of 12 men prepared to swear on oath as to the persons innocence. Failure to get the dozen men confirmed guilt since oaths then had a religious zeal and no one would run risk of eternal damnation by lying under oath. Trial by ordeal ceased in 1215 after it was condemned by pope innocent III. Trial by battle, to the death between accuser and defendant, existed by statute at the same time and was not repealed until 1819.

A important and unique part of the English legal system is that of summary trail by magistrates. In this a panel of, usually, three lay people hear the case and decide on fact, guilt and any punishment. Magistrates account for upwards of 97% of all judicial hearings today.

In 1855 such was the workload of indictable cases coming before the common law courts that an act was passed allowing such cases to be settled without a jury if the parties agreed to it. This attempt to speed up the wheels of justice created the .either way. cases that are now being blamed for slowing the same wheels down. Over the next 150 years more offences were added to the either way list and more cases lost their entitlement to trial by jury most of them being civil cases.1

Jury reform is both a popular academic question and one that has seen much attention from government and royal commissions. The last half of the twentieth century has seen a number of reforms of the jury system In brief these are:

The first was the allowing of majority verdicts (1967). If a unanimous verdict is not forthcoming the judge may accept a majority verdict with either one or two dissenting votes depending on the size of the jury at the trials decision phase.

1974 saw the removal of the property qualification now jurors could be selected from the adult voting population between the ages of 18 and 70 subject to a number of exempt professions.

Courts consisting of a single judge were introduced into Northern Ireland in the 1970s to counter the problem of jury intimidation in terrorist cases. These Diplock courts exist today.

Research into how juries reach their decisions was prevented by the Contempt of court act 1981

The Supreme Court Act 1981specified for what civil cases could a jury could be empanelled and added that in civil cases where there is likely to be complex prolonged examination of accounts, scientific evidence trial by jury could be deemed against the best interest of justice.

There are a number of individual areas of jury reform being investigated. These are the jury composition and selection, the right to trial by jury and that of perverse verdicts. Each of these will be discussed in turn below.

The juries act 1974 lists contains three parts outlining groups of people whom are either excused of right or ineligible for jury service. Those not on these lists can try to be excused on grounds of professional or business loss that would be incurred or family commitments such as child care. An argument against juries s that they can not follow complex arguments. If members of the legal profession were eligible for jury service and others of the professional trades not excused on grounds of financial loss then the level of the juries understanding would rise. In New York state, America, everyone can be called to serve as a juror and judges & lawyers who have done so have found the experience enlightening.

Long complex fraud, defamation or political trials could see a number of jurors drop out due to illness or stress and leave the jury below the minimum of ten for a crown court trial. The swearing in of reserve jurors if judge thinks case is going to go on for a long time to could prevent the jury becoming to small. All jurors sit in and the panel of 12 is selected at end of trial. This would involve some alteration to the jury box but as court buildings are already receiving refits to upgrade their facilities in the jury waiting room the additional disruption would be minimal. Much of the blame for the juries failure to understand fraud cases is laid on the Serious Fraud Office and its inability to present the evidence in an understandable format not on an lack of intelligence of the jury.

In England the defence has no right to object to jur