Jury Trials; Give Juries Freedom to Work
by I’m wondering whether current emphasis on isolating juries is best for the justice system; it doesn’t work anyhow. It’s better to manage the process through education and transparency.
How then, are juries to arrive at a fair and impartial decision?
Hard Work, and the consideration of any and all related factual materials that pertain to the case at hand. We must trust juries to consider , however, ONLY the facts and evidence that relate to the trial at hand, regardless of what they may have seen, read, or researched during their jury time.
Can they ignore the world at large? Should juries be cut off from all contact with the outside world, “sequestered” for the duration of each trial;-no T.V., no newspapers, no Internet, no movies. Can’t and shouldn’t happen. The curent system, with it’s constantly increasing rules and restrictions, distrusts juries to do their job and be fair and impartial.
Individual Jurors have been bribed or coerced, juries even render “nullification” verdicts wherein overwhelming evidence is ignored and verdicts of Innocent are rendered, usually as a result of cultural distrust of the police and the justice system, suspicious evidence, or just plain “punish the system.”
In the current system, at the conclusion of evidence presentation and testimony , including Closing Statements, juries receive ever more complicated instructions from Judges regarding exactly what issues are to be decided, even what issues are to be considered.
Image via Wikipedia
It’s time for a new Jury system.
The new system would provide for a Jury educational template in which the Organization of Jury Deliberations would be managed through formal Written Instructions, outlining the process. A formalization of a multi-step process of optional Jury interaction through mutual introduction (it happens anyhow) might not only be more efficient but fairer. Many Jurors report that discussions sometimes degenerate into personal attacks on other Jurors, or against the system. That’s not likely to change.
But the job of the Jury Foreman, the “coach” of the process, becomes more important in keeping the process moving; review of the Charges, consideration of the Evidence supporting each charge and voting on Guilt or Innocence.
That Jurors resist being sequestered, locked out of their daily lives, “shielded” from information that the system feels could influence their deliberations, fails to recognize the reality of modern life.
Better that the jury system creates more, not less, transparency; allows that the Jurors will obtain and consider information necessary to the “fair and impartial” part of the process; additional knowledge is not a diminution of a Defendant’s rights, only the unfair weighing of opinion, facts or information would be a detriment. The fair consideration of a juror’s own experiences, his values, his community only strengthens the process.
A more informed decision, logically has to be a better decision, a fairer decision.
And when a Judge refuses to answer a Juror’s question regarding the process, the evidence, the charges, the deliberations, he fails to do his job and the system is lessened for it.
An “ideal” Jury might be twelve people who are all local residents of the community where the crime occurred (the Constitution requires only State residency and Citizenship), all twelve approximately the same age- how about all the same gender? After all, how can men deal with “women’s issues? All the same race? All the same profession and education?
The Constitution and the justice system has never interpreted “peers” that precisely; suffice that historical and Court decisions only require Citizens of the State where the crime occurred. Does that make them Peers? Is a Farmer from downstate the peer of a drug addict from the city? Is a “soccer mom” the peer of a gang member? Is a College Junior the Peer of a Serial pedophile? and on and on.
What justice would be provided if the only allowed Peers of Defendants were…criminals?
It is left to trust that a selected juror’s ”peer” status gives them the ability to fairly and impartially weigh the evidence, and in the new Jury model any and all information as necessary, without being unduly or unfairly influenced by extraneous information.
Modern juries resent not being trusted to be fair; they resent the system trying to manipulate them.
At least a newer system and process would deal with the reality of modern society.
It will help the justice system to better solve the problems it faces by delivering more informed and, hopefully, fairer verdicts, more efficiently.
Liked it
