Essay On Jury System

Jury Systems in Three Different Countries The world is a large place and it has many countries. For each country to survive, there must be laws and sometimes the law calls for a trial by a jury system. However, not all countries use the jury system but a few do and this paper will show how the jury system works in the United States, Greece, and Japan. The jury systems of these countries are similar in some aspects and different in others as far as the people involved and what their job is. Simply, a jury system is a system in which people are called to sit in on either criminal or civil cases and help determine guilt, innocence or a resolution in the case. The notion of the jury trial is to be judged or assessed by your peers. A majority …show more content…
However, it was reintroduced in 2009 as the Saiban-in system, which is used only for serious crimes (Guardian). Saiban-in refers to lay judges and the system itself is made up of six jurors and three judges, sitting together in a single line (Columbia). The jurors, or lay judges, are chosen randomly from a pool of candidates and then reduced to six. These six will work with the three professional judges to determine a verdict. For a guilty verdict to stand, there must be a majority decision and have the agreement of at least one professional judge. Even if all three professional judges vote guilty, if five of the six jurors rule not guilty, then the defendant can go free (NY Times).
One similarity between the American and Japanese jury systems as they both randomly select candidates for the jury from the community. Another similarity is that both the Japanese and Greek court system use a mixed format by using both judges and jurors to come to a verdict and they both use three professional judges. Also, the Japanese and Greek jury systems are only used for serious crimes, while the American courts can use the jury for most trials. Another major difference is that the American courts use only one judge while the others use