Essay On Jury Trial

A jury makes the system more open, in that justice is seen to be done and that the process is public, making this a trial by peers and therefore satisfying the Right to Trial by Jury given by the Magna Carta. Jurors are ordinary members of the local community who are not legally trained, and as a Jury does not have to explain its decisions they are free to come to a verdict based on fairness alone. When deliberating a verdict they will sit alone and will be protected from outside influences. In Pontings’ Case (1984) a civil servant was charged under the Official Secrets Act 1889 after he leaked documents to an MP regarding the sinking of a ship – the General Belgrano. He pleaded not guilty because the documents showed that the Government of the day had lied and Ponting maintained that the leaking of

the documents was in the public interest. The Judge ruled that this was not a defence but the Jury still refused to convict him. The secrecy of the jury room can be an advantage and disadvantage. Because the Jury deliberate alone with no other person present they can bring about verdicts that may be unpopular.

Secrecy can also mean that the reasons for decisions are unknown and the jurors’ understanding of the case cannot be clarified. In two conjoined appeals – R v Connor and Rollock and R v Mirza (2004) secrecy was under scrutiny. In Mirza there were questions over the interpreter that were not raised until after the verdict. In the Connor and Rollock case the jurors’ were unsure whom to convict and therefore convicted both of them. The Appeal Court (House of Lords) dismissed the appeal on the grounds that no-one, including appeal judges, can inquire into the deliberations of jurors and this upholds the common law rule that evidence of anything said by jurors about their deliberations after a verdict has been returned is inadmissible. Juries are criticised that they acquit too many defendants, 60% who pleaded not guilty at the Crown Court are acquitted (taken from OCR Law for AS page 174 Author: Jacqueline Martin). The opinion of 12 jurors is more objective than the opinion of one judge, especially when living in the same society. They work subjectively by finding facts that only relate to that case as opposed to having an extensive knowledge that a

qualified judge has. However, jurors are not required to be legally qualified and some may not be able to properly distinguish between evidence, though judges do direct the jury in the right direction. Jurors are often not able to understand more complex distinctions in law, for example complex fraud cases, and it cannot be certain that the jury have not been bribed. In the case of R v Twomey (2009) the court found evidence of jury tampering and this lead to trial without jury for the first time since 1641, showing that it is still possible to override a jury’s decision.