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Post by tangent on Feb 22, 2013 21:41:27 GMT
Vicky Pryce's trial suggests that trial by jury can be a bad thing and South Africa manages without them altogether. Is it time to reform trial by jury and if so, how?
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Post by juju on Feb 23, 2013 11:00:24 GMT
It is rather worrying when people who are given such responsibility don't seem to understand the process or what is expected of them.
This may sound odd but is there a minimum IQ level for jurors? One would hope that in twelve people there would be a good mix of IQ levels and competencies but I guess there is always a risk that all twelve turn out to be a bit thick, to put it bluntly.
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Post by juju on Feb 23, 2013 11:03:44 GMT
OK, I've read down further (I hadn't followed the link initially because I had read about this before). There is no testing for cognitive ability. Worrying.
ETA: I don't know what the alternative could be though.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2013 12:18:09 GMT
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "trial by jury is the worst form of jurisprudence except for all the others we have tried".
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Post by Miisa on Feb 23, 2013 12:46:38 GMT
We don't have juries and manage ok. For serious crimes we have professional lay judges that give input.
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Post by juju on Feb 23, 2013 13:18:05 GMT
Interesting... I was just wondering whether 'professional' juries would be a possibility. I wonder what the pitfalls of that could be? I can't think of any, offhand.
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Post by tangent on Feb 24, 2013 10:28:38 GMT
It is rather worrying when people who are given such responsibility don't seem to understand the process or what is expected of them. This may sound odd but is there a minimum IQ level for jurors? One would hope that in twelve people there would be a good mix of IQ levels and competencies but I guess there is always a risk that all twelve turn out to be a bit thick, to put it bluntly. Or else there were ten jurors who were sensible and two who were thick and a jury foreman who was exasperated and tried to get the judge to settle the arguments. Some of the questions were plain stupid whilst others were sensible. Please explain "was will overborne" was the one question that the judge ought to have explained. Instead, he dismissed it saying, "the words are relatively straightforward English words which the law does not permit me to go beyond further than I have by way of clear illustration in these directions." This is an obvious failure by the judge. I had never heard of the word 'overborne' before, nor had heard of the verb 'overbear' from which it comes. I couldn't even parse the sentence 'was will overborne'. It took me some time searching the Internet to discover it is legal jargon and means 'was her will overridden by emotional pressure?' On the other hand, the last question was plain stupid, "Would religious conviction be a good enough reason for a wife feeling that she had no choice, ie she promised to obey her husband in her wedding vows and he had ordered her to do something and she felt she had to obey?" I can imagine two jurors at each others throats, a traditionalist arguing that she had promised to obey her husband and a feminist arguing that there was no way she would ever sign a form against her will. It's understandable for the jury foreman to ask the judge to resolve the argument but it made the whole jury look rather stupid. On balance, I think the judge let the jury down. The jury asked, "Can you define what is reasonable doubt?" and the judge refused. Anyone who has a teenage daughter knows that her definition of 'reasonable' is very different from our own. We cannot expect two people to agree on what is reasonable and some assistance from the judge would be quite in order. What surprises me is that more juries have not asked stupid questions. "In 30 years of criminal trials I have never come across this at this stage, never," said the judge. To me, that means jurors have been stumbling in the dark when they should have been asking for direction. As one legal commentator on BBC2 put it, if the jury don't understand, then it's the court's fault.
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Post by Moose on Feb 25, 2013 0:59:10 GMT
I read this the other day and thought that actually, the question of whether a women might feel she had to obey her husband over religious matters was about the only sensible one that the jury asked.
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Post by tangent on Feb 25, 2013 1:08:46 GMT
I presume Vicky Pryce had not claimed that she had made the promise nor that she had a religious conviction to fulfil her obligation, in which case it could not be counted as evidence.
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Post by ceptimus on Feb 25, 2013 19:03:17 GMT
The jury asked, "Can you define what is reasonable doubt?" and the judge refused. It's one of the axioms of British justice that no one is ALLOWED to define what 'reasonable doubt' means. It's supposed to be plain English: the theory is that the jurors should know what it means, and if the judge was allowed to define it, then he could influence the jury by using different definition phrasing or just tone of voice for each separate trial. There's also the worry that if the term were interpreted in a particular way for one trial, then that might set a a precedent for any future trials. I agree with you though that it's a bit stupid not to allow a definition - an agreed standard definition of 'reasonable doubt' and other such terms could be perhaps printed on a standard reference card that would be provided to all jury members at the start of a trial.
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Post by tangent on Feb 25, 2013 21:30:44 GMT
The jury asked, "Can you define what is reasonable doubt?" and the judge refused. It's one of the axioms of British justice that no one is ALLOWED to define what 'reasonable doubt' means. It's supposed to be plain English: The judge also refused to define 'was will overborne'. Is that for the same reason? You suppose that "an agreed standard definition of 'reasonable doubt' and other such terms could be perhaps printed on a standard reference card that would be provided to all jury members at the start of a trial." That means the jury would be given training. I doubt the legal system would conceive of a modern idea like that.
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Post by Moose on Feb 28, 2013 21:12:47 GMT
Can I have the sentence was will overborne in context?
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Post by tangent on Feb 28, 2013 22:24:41 GMT
I can't give you the context. I imagine the question is whether Vicky Pryce's will was overborne.
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Post by Mari on Mar 11, 2013 18:11:47 GMT
I actually got that one without a dictionary. Perhaps I have some Dutch reference for it. We don't have a jury here and manage just fine. We have multiple judges who decide together in bigger cases though.
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Post by spaceflower on Mar 19, 2013 17:42:00 GMT
I don't know anything about this Vicky Pryce trial but I've always found this jury system. The jurors can be unintelligent, igorant and prejudical. What's the good thing about juriers, most countries manage without. I've read about people being senctenced to life or even death though iit lated turned out to be innocent.
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Post by Moose on Mar 19, 2013 18:34:33 GMT
Welcome Spacefower
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