A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence, make findings of fact, and render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment.
Juries developed in England during the Middle Ages and are a hallmark of the English common law system. They are commonly used in countries whose legal systems derive from the British Empire, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. While juries are not used in most other countries, whose legal systems based upon either European civil law or Islamic sharia law, their use has been growing.
Most trial juries are "petit juries", and usually consist of twelve people. A larger jury known as a grand jury has been used to investigate potential crimes and render indictments against suspects.
The "petit jury" (or "trial jury", sometimes "petty jury") hears the evidence in a trial as presented by both the plaintiff (petitioner) and the defendant (respondent) (also known as the complainant and defendant within the English criminal legal system). After hearing the evidence and often jury instructions from the judge, the group retires for deliberation, to consider a verdict. The majority required for a verdict varies. In some cases it must be unanimous, while in other jurisdictions it may be a majority or supermajority. A jury that is unable to come to a verdict is referred to as a hung jury.
A grand jury, a type of jury now confined mostly to federal courts and some state jurisdictions in the United States and Liberia, determines whether there is enough evidence for a criminal trial to go forward. Grand juries carry out this duty by examining evidence presented to them by a prosecutor and issuing indictments, or by investigating alleged crimes and issuing presentments. Grand juries are usually larger than trial juries: for example, U.S. federal grand juries have between 16 and 23 members. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans the constitutional right to be free from charges for "capital, or otherwise infamous" crimes unless they have been indicted by a grand jury, although this right applies only to federal law, not state law.
In addition to their primary role in screening criminal prosecutions and assisting in the investigation of crimes, grand juries in California, Florida,[1] and some other U.S. states are sometimes utilized to perform an investigative and policy audit function similar to that filled by the Government Accountability Office in the United States federal government and legislative state auditors in many U.S. states.
In Ireland and other countries in the past, the task of a grand jury was to determine whether the prosecutors had presented a true bill (one that described a crime and gave a plausible reason for accusing the named person).[2]
Another kind of jury, known as a coroner's jury can be convened in some common law jurisdiction in connection with an inquest by a coroner. A coroner is a public official (often an elected local government official in the United States), who is charged with determining the circumstances leading to a death in ambiguous or suspicious cases, such as of Jeffrey Epstein.[citation needed] A coroner's jury is generally a body that a coroner can convene on an optional basis in order to increase public confidence in the coroner's finding where there might otherwise be a controversy.[3] In practice, coroner's juries are most often convened in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety by one governmental official in the criminal justice system toward another if no charges are filed against the person causing the death, when a governmental party such as a law enforcement officer is involved in the death.[4]
A citizens' assembly is a group of people selected by lottery from the general population to deliberate on important public questions so as to exert an influence.[5][6][7] Other types of deliberative mini-publics include citizens' jury, citizens' panel, people's panel, people's jury, policy jury, consensus conference and citizens' convention.[8][9][10][11][12]
A citizens' assembly uses elements of a jury to create public policy.[13] Its members form a representative cross-section of the public, and are provided with time, resources and a broad range of viewpoints to learn deeply about an issue. Through skilled facilitation, the assembly members weigh trade-offs and work to find common ground on a shared set of recommendations. Citizens' assemblies can be more representative and deliberative than public engagement, polls, legislatures or ballot initiatives.[14][15] They seek quality of participation over quantity. They also have added advantages in issues where politicians have a conflict of interest, such as initiatives that will not show benefits before the next election or decisions that impact the types of income politicians can receive. They also are particularly well-suited to complex issues with trade-offs and values-driven dilemmas.[16]
With Athenian democracy as the most famous government to use sortition, theorists and politicians have used citizens' assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy in a variety of modern contexts.[17][18] The OECD has found their use increasing since 2010.[19][20]
The modern jury evolved out of the ancient custom of many ancient Germanic tribes whereby a group of men of certain social standing was used to investigate crimes and judge the accused.[citation needed] The same custom evolved into the vehmic court system in medieval Germany.[citation needed] In Anglo-Saxon England, juries investigated crimes. After the Norman Conquest, some parts of the country preserved juries as the means of investigating crimes.[citation needed] The use of ordinary members of the community to consider crimes was unusual in ancient cultures, but was nonetheless also found in ancient Greece.
The modern jury trial evolved out of this custom in the mid-12th century during the reign of Henry II.[21] Juries, usually 6 or 12 men, were an "ancient institution" even then in some parts of England, at the same time as Members consisted of representatives of the basic units of local government—hundreds (an administrative sub-division of the shire, embracing several vills) and villages. Called juries of presentment, these men testified under oath to crimes committed in their neighbourhood. The Assize of Clarendon in 1166 caused these juries to be adopted systematically throughout the country. The jury in this period was "self-informing," meaning it heard very little evidence or testimony in court. Instead, jurors were recruited from the locality of the dispute and were expected to know the facts before coming to court. The source of juror knowledge could include first-hand knowledge, investigation, and less reliable sources such as rumour and hearsay.[22]
Between 1166 and 1179 new procedures including a division of functions between the sheriff, the jury of local men, and the royal justices ushered in the era of the English Common Law. Sheriffs prepared cases for trial and found jurors with relevant knowledge and testimony. Jurors 'found' a verdict by witnessing as to fact, even assessing and applying information from their own and community memory—little was written at this time and what was, such as deeds and writs, were subject to fraud. Royal justices supervised trials, answered questions as to law, and announced the court's decision which was then subject to appeal. Sheriffs executed the decision of the court. These procedures enabled Henry II to delegate authority without endowing his subordinates with too much power.[21]:293
In 1215 the Catholic Church removed its sanction from all forms of the ordeal—procedures by which suspects up to that time were 'tested' as to guilt (e.g., in the ordeal of hot metal, molten metal was sometimes poured into a suspected thief's hand. If the wound healed rapidly and well, it was believed God found the suspect innocent, and if not then the suspect was found guilty). With trial by ordeal banned, establishing guilt would have been problematic had England not had forty years of judicial experience. Justices were by then accustomed to asking jurors of presentment about points of fact in assessing indictments; it was a short step to ask jurors if they concluded the accused was guilty as charged.[21]:358
The so-called Wantage Code provides an early reference to a jury-like group in England, wherein a decree issued by King Æthelred the Unready (at Wantage, c. 997) provided that in every Hundred "the twelve leading thegns together with the reeve shall go out and swear on the relics which are given into their hands, that they will not accuse any innocent man nor shield a guilty one."[23] The resulting Wantage Code formally recognized legal customs that were part of the Danelaw.[24]
The testimonial concept can also be traced to Normandy before 1066, when a jury of nobles was established to decide land disputes. In this manner, the Duke, being the largest land owner, could not act as a judge in his own case.[25]
One of the earliest antecedents of modern jury systems is the jury in ancient Greece, including the city-state of Athens, where records of jury courts date back to 500 BCE. These juries voted by secret ballot and were eventually granted the power to annul unconstitutional laws, thus introducing the practice of judicial review. In modern justice systems, the law is considered "self-contained" and "distinct from other coercive forces, and perceived as separate from the political life of the community," but "all these barriers are absent in the context of classical Athens. In practice and in conception the law and its administration are in some important respects indistinguishable from the life of the community in general."[26]
In juries of the Justices in Eyre, the bailiff of the hundred would choose 4 electors who in turn chose 12 others from their hundred, and from these were selected 12 jurors.[27]
From the 17th century until 1898 in Ireland, Grand Juries also functioned as local government authorities.[28]
In 1730, the British Parliament passed the Bill for Better Regulation of Juries.[29] The Act stipulated that the list of all those liable for jury service was to be posted in each parish and that jury panels would be selected by lot, also known as sortition, from these lists. Its aim was to prevent middle-class citizens from evading their responsibilities by financially putting into question the neutrality of the under-sheriff, the official entrusted with impaneling juries. Prior to the Act, the main means of ensuring impartiality was by allowing legal challenges to the sheriff's choices. The new provisions did not specifically aim at establishing impartiality but had the effect of reinforcing the authority of the jury by guaranteeing impartiality at the point of selection.
In some American colonies (such as in New England and Virginia) and less often in England, juries also handed down rulings on the law in addition to rulings on the facts of the case.[30] The American grand jury was also indispensable to the American Revolution by challenging the Crown and Parliament, including by indicting British soldiers, refusing to indict people who criticized the crown, proposing boycotts and called for the support of the war after the Declaration of Independence.[31]
In the late 18th century, English and colonial civil, criminal and grand juries played major roles in checking the power of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.[31]
In 1825, the rules concerning juror selection in England were consolidated. Property qualifications and various other rules were standardised, although an exemption was left open for towns which "possessed" their own courts.[32] This reflected a more general understanding that local officials retained a large amount of discretion regarding which people they actually summoned. In the late eighteenth century, King has found evidence of butchers being excluded from service in Essex;[33] while Crosby has found evidence of "peripatetic ice cream vendors" not being summoned in the summer time as late as 1923.[34][better source needed]
With the adoption of the Juries Act (Ireland) 1871, property qualifications for Irish jurors were partially standardized and lowered, so that jurors were drawn from among men who paid above a certain amount of taxes for poor relief.[2][better source needed] This expanded the number of potential jurors, even though only a small minority of Irish people were eligible to serve.[2]
Until the 1870s, jurors in England and Ireland worked under the rule that they could not leave, eat, drink, or have a fire to warm themselves by, though they could take medicine.[2] This rule appears to have been imposed with the idea that hungry jurors would be quicker to compromise, so they could reach a verdict and therefore eat.[2] Jurors who broke the rule by smuggling in food were sometimes fined, and occasionally, especially if the food were believed to come from one of the parties in the case, the verdict was quashed.[2] Later in the century, jurors who did not reach a verdict on the first day were no longer required to sleep in the courthouse, but were sometimes put up, at the expense of the parties in the trial, at a hotel.[2]
After 1919 in England, women were no longer excluded from jury service by virtue of their sex, although they still had to satisfy the ordinary property qualifications. The exemption which had been created by the 1825 Act for towns which "possessed" their own courts meant ten towns were free to ignore the property qualifications. This amplified in these towns the general understanding that local officials had a free hand in summoning freely from among those people who were qualified to be jurors. In 1920, three of these ten towns – Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham – consistently empanelled assize juries of six men and six women; while at the Bristol, Exeter, and Norwich assizes no women were empanelled at all.[35][better source needed] This quickly led to a tightening up of the rules, and an abolition of these ten towns' discretion. After 1922, trial juries throughout England had to satisfy the same qualifications; although it was not until the 1980s that a centralised system was designed for selecting jurors from among the people who were qualified to serve.[36] This meant there was still a great amount of discretion in the hands of local officials.
Potential jurors are summoned to the courthouse for service. In the past, jurors were identified manually, by local authorities making lists of men they believed to be eligible for service.[2] In 19th-century Ireland, the list of eligible jurors in each court district was alphabetized, and in the later part of the century, the sheriff was required to summon one potential juror from each letter of the alphabet, repeating as needed until a sufficient number of men had been summoned, usually between 36 and 60 men for the quarterly assizes.[2] Normally the sheriff or a constable went to each juror's home to show him the summons paperwork (venire facias de novo); it wasn't until 1871 that any Irish jurors could be summoned by mail.[2] In modern times, juries are often initially chosen randomly, usually from large databases identifying the eligible population of adult citizens residing in the court's jurisdictional area (e.g., identity cards, drivers' licenses, tax records, or similar systems), and summons are delivered by mail.
In the past, qualifications included things like being an adult male, having a good reputation in the community, and owning land. Modern requirements may include being a citizen of that country and having a fluent understanding of the language used during the trial. In addition to a minimum age, some countries have a maximum age.[2] Some countries disqualify people who have been previously convicted of a crime or excuse them on various grounds, such as being ill or holding certain jobs or offices.[2]
Serving on a jury is normally compulsory for individuals who are qualified for jury service. Skipping service may be inevitable in a small number of cases, as a summoned juror might become ill or otherwise become unexpectedly unable to appear at the court. However, a significant fraction of summoned jurors may fail to appear for other reasons. In 1874, there was a report that one-third of summoned Irish jurors failed to appear in court.[2]
When an insufficient number of summoned jurors appear in court to handle a matter, the law in many jurisdictions empowers the jury commissioner or other official convening the jury to involuntarily impress bystanders in the vicinity of the place where the jury is to be convened to serve on the jury.[37]
As the concept of a jury was spread through the British Empire, first to Ireland and then to other countries, the size of the jury was one of the details that was adapted to the local culture.[2] The tradition in England was to have twelve jurors, but other countries use smaller juries,[2] and some, such as Scotland, use larger juries.
The size of the jury is to provide a "cross-section" of the public. In Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a Florida state jury of six was sufficient, that "the 12-man panel is not a necessary ingredient of "trial by jury," and that respondent's refusal to impanel more than the six members provided for by Florida law "did not violate petitioner's Sixth Amendment rights as applied to the States through the Fourteenth."[38] In Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223 (1978), the Supreme Court ruled that the number of jurors could not be reduced below six.
In Brownlee v The Queen (2001) 207 CLR 278, the High Court of Australia unanimously held that a jury of 12 members was not an essential feature of "trial by jury" in section 80 of the Australian Constitution.
In Scotland, a jury in a criminal trial consists of 15 jurors, which is thought to be the largest in the world. In 2009 a review by the Scottish Government regarding the possibility of reduction[39] led to the decision to retain 15 jurors, with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice stating that after extensive consultation, he had decided that Scotland had got it "uniquely right".[40] Trials in the Republic of Ireland which are scheduled to last over 2 months can, but do not have to, have 15 jurors.
A study by the University of Glasgow suggested that a civil jury of 12 people was ineffective because a few jurors ended up dominating the discussion, and that seven was a better number because more people feel comfortable speaking, and they have an easier time reaching a unanimous decision.[41][42][43]
Jurors are expected to be neutral, so the court may inquire about the jurors' neutrality or otherwise exclude jurors who are perceived as likely to be less than neutral or partial to one side. Jury selection in the United States usually includes organized questioning of the prospective jurors (jury pool) by the lawyers for the plaintiff and the defendant and by the judge—voir dire—as well as rejecting some jurors because of bias or inability to properly serve ("challenge for cause"), and the discretionary right of each side to reject a specified number of jurors without having to prove a proper cause for the rejection ("peremptory challenge"), before the jury is impaneled.
Since there is always the possibility of jurors not completing a trial for health or other reasons, often one or more alternate jurors may be selected. Alternates are present for the entire trial but do not take part in deliberating the case and deciding the verdict unless one or more of the impaneled jurors are removed from the jury. For example, in the United Kingdom, a small number of alternate jurors may be empanelled until the end of the opening speeches by counsel, in case a juror realises they are familiar with the matters before the court.
Jurors are selected from a jury pool formed for a specified period of time—usually from one day to two weeks—from lists of citizens living in the jurisdiction of the court. The lists may be electoral rolls (i.e., a list of registered voters in the locale), people who have driver's licenses or other relevant data bases. When selected, being a member of a jury pool is, in principle, compulsory. Prospective jurors are sent a summons and are obligated to appear in a specified jury pool room on a specified date.
However, jurors can be released from the pool for several reasons including illness, prior commitments that cannot be abandoned without hardship, change of address to outside the court's jurisdiction, travel or employment outside the jurisdiction at the time of duty, and others. Often jurisdictions pay token amounts for jury duty and many issue stipends to cover transportation expenses for jurors. Work places cannot penalize employees who serve jury duty. Payments to jurors varies by jurisdiction.[44]
In the United States jurors for grand juries are selected from jury pools.
Selection of jurors from a jury pool occurs when a trial is announced and juror names are randomly selected and called out by the jury pool clerk. Depending on the type of trial—whether a 6-person or 12 person jury is needed, in the United States—anywhere from 15 to 30 prospective jurors are sent to the courtroom to participate in voir dire, pronounced [vwaʁ diʁ] in French, the oath to speak the truth in the examination testing competence of a juror, or in another application, a witness. Once the list of prospective jurors has assembled in the courtroom the court clerk assigns them seats in the order their names were originally drawn. At this point the judge often will ask each prospective juror to answer a list of general questions such as name, occupation, education, family relationships, time conflicts for the anticipated length of the trial. The list is usually written up and clearly visible to assist nervous prospective jurors and may include several questions uniquely pertinent to the particular trial. These questions are to familiarize the judge and attorneys with the jurors and glean biases, experiences, or relationships that could jeopardize the proper course of the trial.
After each prospective juror has answered the general slate of questions the attorneys may ask follow-up questions of some or all prospective jurors. Each side in the trial is allotted a certain number of challenges to remove prospective jurors from consideration. Some challenges are issued during voir dire while others are presented to the judge at the end of voir dire. The judge calls out the names of the anonymously challenged prospective jurors and those return to the pool for consideration in other trials. A jury is formed, then, of the remaining prospective jurors in the order that their names were originally chosen. Any prospective jurors not thus impaneled return to the jury pool room.
A jury is intended to be an impartial panel capable of reaching a verdict and representing a variety of people from that area. Achieving this goal can be difficult when juror qualifications differ significantly from the people living in that area.[2] For example, in 19th-century Ireland, the qualified jurors were much wealthier, much less likely to be Roman Catholic, and much less likely to speak only the Irish language than the typical Irish person.[2] In the past, Englan