jury

jury¹

—juryless, adj.

/joor"ee/, n., pl. juries., v., juried, jurying.

n.

1. a group of persons sworn to render a verdict or true answer on a question or questions officially submitted to them.

2. such a group selected according to law and sworn to inquire into or determine the facts concerning a cause or an accusation submitted to them and to render a verdict to a court. Cf. grand jury, petty jury.

3. a group of persons chosen to adjudge prizes, awards, etc., as in a competition.

4. the jury is (still) out, a decision, determination, or opinion has yet to be rendered: The jury is still out on the President's performance.

v.t.

5. to judge or evaluate by means of a jury: All entries will be juried by a panel of professionals.

[1250-1300; ME jurie, juree, < OF juree oath, juridical inquiry, n. use of juree, fem. ptp. of jurer to swear; cf. JURAT]

Usage. See collective noun.

jury²

/joor"ee/, adj. Naut.

makeshift or temporary, as for an emergency: a jury mast.

[1610-20; cf. jury mast (early 17th century), of obscure orig.; perh. to be identified with late ME i(u)were help, aid, aph. form of OF ajurie, deriv. of aidier to AID, with -rie -RY]

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I

In law, a body of individuals selected and sworn to inquire into a question of fact and to render a verdict according to the evidence.

Juries may deal with questions of law in addition to questions of fact, though federal juries in the U.S. are usually limited to dealing with questions of fact. The modern jury can vary in size depending on the proceeding but usually has either 6 or 12 members. By U.S. law, federal grand juries and petit juries must be "selected at random from a fair cross-section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes." State jury selection varies somewhat. The Supreme Court of the United States has stated in a series of decisions that a jury is to be composed of "peers and equals" and that systematic exclusion from a jury of a particular class of people (e.g., on the basis of sex, skin colour, or ancestry) violates the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and the defendant's right to a jury trial. A defendant is not, however, entitled to a jury of any particular composition. See also grand jury; petit jury; voir dire.

II

(as used in expressions)

grand jury

petit jury

trial jury

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Introduction

      historic legal institution in which a group of laypersons participate in deciding cases brought to trial. Its exact characteristics and powers depend on the laws and practices of the countries, provinces, or states in which it is found, and there is considerable variation. Basically, however, it recruits laypersons at random from the widest population for the trial of a particular case and allows them to deliberate in secrecy, to reach a decision by a vote, and to present its verdict without giving reasons. Throughout its history, it has perhaps been both overpraised as a charter of liberty and overcriticized as a reliance on incompetent amateurs in the administration of justice.

History and use

      The origin of the jury is disputed. It may have been indigenous to England or have been taken there by the Norman invaders in 1066. Originally, the jurors were neighbourhood witnesses who passed judgment on the basis of what they themselves knew. The breakdown of medieval society and the growth of the towns changed the role of the jury, which came to be called upon to determine the facts of the case on the basis of the evidence presented in court. The availability of the jury in the king's courts may have been a key factor in centralizing the country's courts under the king and in creating the common law. By the 15th century, nonrational modes of trial such as ordeal, in which the defendant was subjected to various tortures, were replaced by the jury trial, which became the established form of trial for both criminal and civil cases at common law.

      Two forces extended the jury outside England. The expansion of the British Empire brought the jury to Asia, Africa, and the American continent, and the French Revolution and its aftermath brought the jury, as a symbol of popular government, to the European continent. Juries were first established in France itself; through Napoleon (Napoleon I), the jury was introduced first in the Rhineland, then in Belgium, and finally in most of the remaining German states, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Luxembourg. However, the last two countries abolished it immediately after Napoleon's defeat. In each of these countries, use of the jury was limited to trials of major crimes and of political crimes against the state.

      Beginning in the mid-19th century, the jury was weakened in a variety of ways. For example, in 1850 Prussia removed treason from its jurisdiction; in 1851 the duchy of Nassau removed all political crimes; in 1923 Czechoslovakia removed treason and, one year later, libel; in 1919 Hungary suspended trial by jury entirely and never restored it. Germany abandoned the jury in 1924. Both the Soviet bloc and the fascist states abolished it outright; France never restored the jury abolished during the German occupation in the 1940s, and Japan did away with its short-lived jury courts in 1943. After World War II, Austria reintroduced the jury in a weakened form.

      Thus, the history of the jury shows that the effort to introduce it outside the Anglo-American legal orbit largely failed. In England its use was limited by statute to a small category of cases. Consequently, the United States emerged as the home of the jury system for both criminal and civil cases; more than 90 percent of all jury trials in the world occur in the United States.

      Use of the jury in the United States depends on two factors: the degree to which it is available as a matter of right and the degree to which the parties choose to use it. The availability of the jury trial varied from state to state, but, in 1968 in Duncan v. Louisiana, the United States Supreme Court (Supreme Court of the United States) ruled that a jury trial is a constitutional right in all criminal cases in which the penalty may exceed six months' imprisonment. In civil cases its constitutional status is more various, but jury trial generally is available in all U.S. states and in the federal courts. The practice of allowing the parties to waive a jury trial also varies widely from region to region.

Jury procedures

Selection

      Historically, there were requirements of property and competence for jury service. The genuine random selection of jurors from the general population (to achieve a cross section of the community) gained ground and became the principle of selection in the federal courts and most state courts. Most jurisdictions exempt some groups from jury service (e.g., police officers, lawyers, doctors, etc.). All jurisdictions excuse jurors if the service imposes undue hardship.

      The commitment of important decisions to a random group of laypersons has been moderated, particularly in the United States, by an elaborate screening process known as voir dire, which is conducted by trial counsel at the inception of a trial. The law permits counsel to challenge prospective jurors either for cause (if there is specific likelihood of bias) or, for a limited number, “peremptorily” (i.e., without having to give a reason). American trial tradition attaches a great deal of significance to the strategies of juror selection, and in high-profile cases the lawyers' voir dire examination has sometimes extended for several weeks.

Size and unanimity

      Traditionally, the jury had 12 members and was required to reach its decision with unanimity. Over time, some modifications occurred. Some jurisdictions prescribe or allow a jury of six in minor criminal cases. In civil cases the federal courts usually employ a six-person jury, and many jurisdictions allow verdicts by less-than-unanimous votes. When the required number of jurors cannot agree on a verdict (termed a hung jury in the United States), the judge declares a mistrial, which means that the case, unless it is withdrawn, must be tried anew. Remarkably, hung juries occur with relative infrequency even when unanimity is required. In Europe juries generally operate under a different principle. Unless at least two-thirds of all the jurors vote guilty, the defendant must be acquitted. The United States Army court-martial jury also operates under this principle.

Sentencing

      In civil cases the jury decides both issues of liability and the amount of damages. In criminal cases the jury has been restricted generally to issues of guilt, while punishment has generally been left to the judge. However, in some states the jury also decides the sentence within a certain range that the law provides. In all jurisdictions that have retained capital punishment, if the jury finds the defendant guilty of the capital crime, it decides—or at least expresses an opinion—as to whether the death penalty is to be imposed. In some jurisdictions decisions on guilt and sentences are rendered simultaneously, but others employ a so-called second trial in capital cases, which occurs after a guilty verdict. During this second phase, pleas and evidence are presented for and against the imposition of the death penalty, after which the jury determines the sentence.

Control

      Trial by jury is conducted under the supervision of a judge. The formula for sharing power between a judge and jury is complex. First, the judge decides what the jury may or may not hear under the rules of evidence. Second, if the judge finds that the evidence presented leaves no factual issue to be resolved, he may withdraw the issue from the jury and direct the jury to acquit a defendant or, in a civil trial, find for either plaintiff or defendant; however, he cannot direct a guilty verdict in a criminal trial. Third, in some jurisdictions the judge may, and often will, summarize the evidence or even discuss its weight. Fourth, the judge instructs the jury as to the law it should apply in reaching the verdict. Finally, if the judge finds the jury's verdict to be manifestly against the weight of the evidence, he may with one exception set it aside and order a new trial. The only exception is in a criminal case in which the jury renders an acquittal; under Anglo-American law (though not under European continental law), the jury's acquittal is always final.

      The jury normally renders a general verdict (i.e., a “yes” or “no” answer to liability or guilt) and does not give reasons for its decision. However, at times courts employ “special verdicts” or “special interrogatories” in which the jurors are asked to decide a series of specific factual issues that bear on the overall verdict.

The controversy over the jury

      The jury has been enmeshed in a perennial debate as to its merits, a debate that has recruited some of the great names in law and political philosophy—from Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de), William Blackstone (Blackstone, Sir William), and Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson, Thomas) to present-day theorists and practitioners. The debate largely has centred on three issues. First, there is the debate about collateral aspects; there are favourable contentions that the jury provides an important civic experience, that it makes tolerable the stringency of certain legal regulations, that it acts as a sort of lightning rod for animosity that otherwise might centre on the more permanent judge, and that the jury is a guarantor of integrity, since it is generally more difficult to bribe 12 people than 1. Against this it has been urged that jury duty disenchants the citizen, that it imposes an unfair burden, that the jury is expensive, and that it makes it difficult to do away with the often interminable delays that exist in civil litigation.

      Second, there is the issue of the jury's competence. Opponents of the jury system argue that the judge—by training, discipline, experience, and superior intelligence—is better able to understand law and facts than laypersons drawn from a broad range of levels of intelligence, without experience, and without durable official responsibility. In contrast, supporters of juries maintain that 12 heads are better than 1, that the jury as a group has wisdom and strength beyond that of its individual members, that it makes up in common sense and experience what it lacks in training, and that its very inexperience is an asset because it secures a fresh perception of each trial, avoiding the stereotypes that may infect the judicial eye.

      Finally, the jury's interpretation of the law has been a focus of controversy. Critics complain that juries will not follow the law, either because individuals do not understand it or because they do not like it (which is sometimes known as jury nullification), and hence will administer justice unevenly. They also allege that juries produce a government by individuals and not by the rule of law, against which Anglo-American political tradition is so steadfastly set. Supporters of the jury system offer this very flexibility as its most endearing characteristic, viewing the jury as a device for ensuring that the rigidity of the general rule can be shaped to justice in a particular case, with government by the spirit of the law and not by its letter.

Jury performance

      For The American Jury (1966), a classic survey of some 7,000 jury trials by Harry Kalven and Hans Zeisel, presiding judges were requested to reveal how they would have decided without a jury. The results of the survey provided some major insights into the actual performance of the contemporary American jury. In both civil and criminal trials, the judge and jury agreed in four-fifths of all verdicts. In civil cases the disagreement in the remaining cases was symmetrically split; in 19 percent of the criminal cases, the judge would have convicted, whereas the jury acquitted. The letter of the law confines the jury to “finding the facts,” but the deviations from the judge are mostly a result of the jury's subtle, and not always conscious, injection of its own sense of justice into a case that might go either way. This sense of justice may be concerned with the person of the accused, with the threat of too harsh a punishment, or with the content of the criminal law rules. Thus, close study of the jury has revealed it as a highly sensitive institution, subtle and discerning, moved by factors far beyond gross sympathy for the defendant. On the whole, the system tolerates and even appreciates these deviations of the jury from the judge, even if in rare cases they reflect what the national community experiences as intolerable local prejudice.

Harry Kalven, Jr. Hans Zeisel Ed.

Additional Reading

The origin of the jury trial is discussed in Leonard W. Levy, The Palladium of Justice: Origins of Trial by Jury (1999); and William Forsyth, History of Trial by Jury, 2nd ed., edited by James Appleton Morgan (1875, reissued 1994). A classic study exploring how judges would decide cases in the absence of a jury is Harry Kalven, Jr., and Hans Zeisel, The American Jury (1966, reissued 1993). A treatise defending trial by jury is J. Kendall Few, Trial by Jury, 2 vol. (1993). A criticism of the jury system is Stephen J. Adler, The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom (1994). Donald E. Vinson and David S. Davis, Jury Persuasion: Psychological Strategies & Trial Techniques, 3rd ed. (1996), discusses techniques used to sway the decision of juries. Michael S. Leif, H. Mitchell Caldwell, and Benjamin Bycel, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law (1998, reissued 2000), provides quotations from famous closing statements to juries by lawyers. W.R. Cornish, The Jury, rev. ed. (1971), is a comprehensive British essay on the jury, combining traditional learning with empirical material.Harry Kalven, Jr. Hans Zeisel Ed.

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