by Domnall Óg
Home >> Trial by Jury
According to Magna Carta, where English law is rooted, the jurors do not just decide if you are innocent or guilty. They also decide if the law is correct or not. What an excellent example of common sense justice!
No surprise then that the Home Office (for ‘Home’ read ‘Interior’) wants to change that. Governments (left and right) make laws, appoint judges and regulate what evidence is admissible and how important it is. There is an immense temptation to manipulate even in mature democracies. So without trial by jury you effectively get trial by government. We can see that happening now in some less civilised countries.
In a 2002 survey over 80% of Britons said they thought the jury system was the most just way of conducting a trial. 73% said the jury system reflected their values.
Of course some trials, such as fraud, are very complicated. Can ordinary people understand the twists and turns of such complexities? Well, yes. If the law is too complicated , simplify it. Right and wrong, possession and theft surely can be explained by an able lawyer to twelve members of the public.
There will be miscarriages of justice of course. Human nature. But I believe there will be fewer. Research shows that ethnic minorities feel they will receive fairer treatment from juries that contain some of them, than from a pair of white, old, middle or upper class men.
Hugo Young of Britain’s “Guardian�? newspaper says “Juries are part of a decent British society. They add to the perception of justice. They speak for a whole community, as well as deciding an individual’s innocence or guilt. They are elements of a social fabric that in some places is breaking apart.�?
In the six counties that constitute Northern Ireland trial by jury was suspended. It was argued that it was impossible to find an unbiased jury for crimes related to the “Troubles�?. It is generally accepted though that the standard of justice suffered greatly during this period.
The law belongs to you and me. So do the judges and the lawyers and the police and the courtrooms and the money used to maintain them.
The question is not how do we justify having a jury but rather how can we justify not having one. Sir Robin Auld, a senior judge, was recently asked by the British Government to make a comprehensive review of the British legal system.
About juries he reported “Criminal trials are all about the lives of other people. “Trial by your peers (equals)” may be an old-fashioned phrase, but there is nothing out-of-date about its application. The jury is much more likely to comprise people who are “the peers” of defendants, victims and witnesses than any other tribunal. Every summing-up invites 12 people to bring to bear on the case their accumulated experience of people and the world in which we all live, their combined common sense and their collective wisdom.�?
In other words Justice’ is just us.
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2009-08-13 05:00:00 +0200
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Hi Dónal,
I’m afraid I can’t agree with you about this. I don’t trust much in Juries. I believe in Common sense of the general public but I also believe there are too many ways of manipulating that common sense nowadays, by the press, the tv, even the politians.
Maybe when it comes to the most usual kind of crimes, like thefts, there are no risks implied cause they don’t receive much attention from the Mass Media. I see danger when crimes become a Society concern, because of the atrocity of it in case of murders or because it’s a corruption matter in case of political crimes. In these situations there are two trials, one is held in the streets, newspapers, tv programs, etc; the other one is held in a courtroom. One should be considered innonce till guilt is proved, that’s what’s written in our law, but we all know Society judges in advance, and some people are considered guilty just because they’ve been prosecuted.
Human nature is very complicated, when you become member of a jury you’re supposed to forget all you’ve seen or heard about that particular crime, but can we really do that? I don’t think so. Of course a judge is a human being as well and receives the same information about these trials but I think a judge is, at the end, a professional, taught to leave all those considerations apart, experienced enough for not being that easyly manipulated. Besides the Mass Media influence, we have to be careful with the ability of lawyers to “disguise” the truth, their speech skills turn them into dangerous weapons for the sake of justice.
Trial by jury could become a circus if control meassures are not applied, not allowing lawyers to turn into actors, making juries blind to the facts because they’re too concentrated in the lawyers’ personal charisma.
Paloma
In England it is illegal to comment on court cases that have not been resolved. When a matter is sub judice you can end in prison if you do anything that might infuence a jury.
In Spain journalistic ethics in the mass media are conspicuous by their absence. But I say that you don’t change the legal system for the media, you change the media for the legal system.
Can a white male middle-class judge really be the best judge of a case of the rape of a black working class woman, for example?
A judge, inevitably, is concered with her/his career.
A jury has no career to lose.
Hi Dónal,
Do you remember the film entitled ‘Runaway jury’? As far as I remember it describes quite well how easy is to manipulate a trial by having the right jury and ‘motivating’ it.
From my point of view, most of us can be easily manipulated, cann’t we? Moreover, there are a lot of details to be considered in a trial, and we do not know all of them.
Finally, there are some cases when a social awareness exits previous to the trial, for example about terrorism or politics. In these cases, would you be able to find a neutral or aseptic jury? I think it would be an impossible mission.
I really don’t understand the doubts. This is not a new thing being introduced. It is a centuries old working system.
We already know that it DOES work.
Whether or not it works remains to be seen. Whether or not this is an achievement goes without saying. Unfortunately, all too often, juries love to play God and decide when they can terminate human life. This is humanity’s fault for letting this happen… undoubtedly, the trial by jury of one’s peers seems quite fair, but not completely exempt from mistakes (and sometimes grave mistakes.) We will continue to try and perfect this system to make it more and more respectful and introduce the concept of mercy as well, which seems to have been forgotten, but which is certainly contemplated in the law books.
Regarding the question of racism…well you can introduce that topic in every week along with sexism in practically any topic, but you might want to analyse the norm and not the exception.
Great article!
Remains to be seen????
Trial by jury has been in effect since 1225!!!!
If you look at sentencing figures you can see black people have more chance of being sent to prison than white people who have committed the same crime. I don’t see how you can divorce the question of racism from an article on justice.
Donal,
A very good question…I said “remains to be seen” because the “justice system” currently in place has been especially unjust towards the unborn and has been personally responsible for their innocent blood and the deaths of criminals, deserving or not. Whether or not the system can improve and erradicate certain unjust possibilities which undermine its very authority does still remain to be seen.
As far as racism is concerned: Why does everything boild down to race and sex? I agree that racism is an evil that needs to be addressed, but it is certainly not the only issue… I see a lot more cases of murder, robberies, rapes, etc. with have nothing to do with racism or sex, and a lot more to do with violence. I didn’t mean to exclude the issue, and therefore, I will come out and ask you: where do you get your facts from? In which geopolitical area are you talking about?...that would be helpful to understand where you are coming from..
Paul
Read the first sentence
I think that there are several implications that has to be taken into accont. The first one is the type of law herency, but also the culture.
In Law coming from Roman herency, all arrangements and penalties are perfectly defined, even if you suffer a loss of a member, the reimbursement is clearly stipulated… Under this law, a jury makes no sense. To avoid inquititous behaviour, there is complex procedure to appeal to upper courts. This law has been working for two thousand years.
In Anglo-Saxon laws, the arrangements and penalties have been defined based on experiences and unwritten manners…
Probably, both are rights. In fact both have been working for centuries. The mistake is to merge both concepts.
Yes, that’s a very good and pertinent point. Spanish law has a different ‘bloodline’ to Anglo-Saxon law.
I couldn’t agree more with Donal. The bloodline is so deceiving at times…
I just read in the newspaper today about this same case: Spain captures their criminals and lets them go and that’s why we are in the situation that we are in with all sorts of Eastern European mafia, who do a great disservice to the loving nationals of Eastern Europe – earning them a bad name, when they are truly abiding citizens. Spain just recently started the idea of calling citizens to serve on juries (according to a student of mine) but we still have a long way to go…in turning 30 year sentences into exactly that, 30 years. I do hope that there is some hope for redemption in this life… but reinsertion is unacceptable at this point.
Were crime figures lower before the East European mafias came in?
Let’s see
——Hi again,
It’s a very interesting review of criminal evolution in Spain. There are so many things about criminality that we take for granted without a closer look to the facts!!! I hear constantly comments about the dangers of inmigration, how dramatically has the criminality levels increased because of the foreign population living in Spain. I’d always thought those comments were based primarily in fear of the unknown, this article proves it. I think we should pay attention to the data available before we explain our conclusions about the subject, that’s something not happening in Spain right now. Everybody has an opinion about the origin of crimes, but those opinions are always based in what we heard or what we believe, even in the Media we see these same mistakes committed once and again, not facts, just fear. I think we need a change in our justice system, ¿not based in reinsertion?, I don’t think so. Prison should be just the last resource, not the first one like it happens nowadays, that’s obvious, but reinsertion must be our goal. We need more citizens in our streets, no more criminals in our prisons. That’s not the way to achieve a better world. It’s too expensive for our Society having so many criminals in our prisons and it’s not safe either. Keep a human being away from the real world too much and you’ll get someone unable of surviving in that world, someone who will go on commiting crimes cause there’s nothing else in his/her life anymore.
Paloma
In the U.S., when you register to vote, you “sign up” for jury duty. When they call you, you’d better have a good excuse not to go. If you don’t, they will charge you with Contempt of Court and fine you or even throw you in jail. When you go (a better idea), the lawyers may eliminate you before the trial even begins or you may end up serving for months, depending on the trial. You are excused from work but you don’t receive your full salary. All in all, a right, a duty and, in our respective Anglo-Saxon countries, a necessity.
I was called last December. My excuse was that I live in Spain. A good enough excuse? I hope so!
P.S. Excellent points made, Paloma.
Paloma,
An eloquent and well-founded defence of real justice. Thank you for sharing those views.
Yes! That was excellent!
Now another aside. When I was a high school sophomore in New York City, we had a field trip to court. A suspected murderer was being tried. He was black. The jury happened to be all-white.
Years later, an Asian-American friend was called in for a murder case. The suspect was white. Her phone would ring in the middle of the night. She really freaked out.
The same way “Stephen” reminded some of us about the “Dead Poets Society”, “Trial by Jury” has reminded me of the great Henry Fonda film “12 Angry Men” and of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (its film version stunningly performed by Gregory Peck). If your English is upper-intermediate or above, you must read this novel and see these films!