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 of the jury (and sometimes a unanimous one) is usually needed to determine the outcome of the case. The jury is supposed to be impartial and unbiased in their consideration of the evidence. The idea of the jury trial first appeared in the Magna Carta (of England) signed by King John in 1215 (US Legal). However, this first ever right to a jury trial only applied to knights and landowners at that time, not the common people (US Legal). Obviously, in 800 years, that application has changed as the jury trial can be applied to almost anyone. The United States has one of the better known jury systems in the world because of Article III Section 2 of the United States Constitution. This section basically states that all federal trials shall be by jury (Judicial Learning). This section was backed up by the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments. The Fifth Amendment provided for the use of a grand jury in criminal cases, the Sixth guaranteed the right of trial by jury in in serious federal criminal cases, and the Seventh allowed a jury trial in civil cases where the amount in controversy was over $20 (Law Encyclopedia). In the early days, people who served on the juries were expected to have knowledge of the case prior to serving but as populations increased in the U.S., it would become harder to find people who met that criteria. Under modern law, the parties of a case usually prefer that a jury candidate have no knowledge of the case that could prejudice the outcome, however, in today’s society of social media, it can be hard to not have knowledge of a certain case so if a person can promise to keep an open mind, they can serve on a jury (Law Encyclopedia). In the United States, a jury is made up of people chosen at random among the community and can contain anywhere from 6 to 12 people. The number of jurors depends on the size of the case and whether it is a civil or criminal case (Rotlaw). One interesting section of an American jury trial is the voir dire, which is the process …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