Juries Pros And Cons

In the United States a courtroom is divided up into two main parts, the Judge and Jury. It is one of the better systems because it provides a relatively unbiased system that uses a group of people to judge a peer. It, however is not without flaws. There is a possibility of the jury becoming biased due to the media coverage of a case. There are multiple ways around this such as replacing the juries in favor of a panel of judges. Next would be using a set of professional juries instead of the common people. Lastly, there is the possibility of giving the police the power to act as both the judge and jury, in order to get rid of criminals. The first way to possibly fix the justice system would be to replace the juries for a panel of court judges. The advantages of this would be that the judges would be properly trained to handle any court case. One of the major problems with the juries is that no one comes from a background in law, which leads to the judge having to explain how the laws would work for a case. By having a panel of judges, however, you can dramatically speed up a court case, because everyone is knowledgeable about the matter. The con of this, however, would be that court cases would be hard for the general population to follow. Without the need of a jury, the case could be lost in translation, through the overuse of court terminology that the general public would not know of. In conclusion, while there is the benefit of speeding up court case it also alienates the population who could be effected by the court’s decision. The next possible system that could be implemented would be to replace the common jury with a professional jury. …show more content…
One of the major benefits of a professional jury would be that the juries would be made up of people with an in depth understanding of the laws and new technologies. Another pro would be that people who are on a common jury would bring their bias views into the courtroom and because the prosecution can dismiss a juror by challenges or cause, the prosecutor would be able to move the selection in their favor. With professional jury, however, that would not be the case as they would not be able to be removed and would only go off of the evidence presented. The con would be that it would undermine a part of the idea of juries. The point of a jury is to have a mixed selection of peers, with different backgrounds to judge a defendant. If you were to preselect a group, such as a professional jury, then you lose out on the potential of multiple backgrounds. This so because to be selected for a professional jury you would have to go to law school to have an understanding of the laws and not everyone can go to college. Lastly is the pros and cons on police acting as judge and jury. The last possible system change would be for police to act as both judge and jury. This is by far the worst system. One of the few pros would be that there would be no trials, as police would judge on the spot if a person was guilt or not. The cons would be that the police would grow more ruthless, as there would be no laws to stop them. Another con would be that the police would begin to start operating as military police. In conclusion, having police act as both