One of the most unusual cases was RV Young in 1991. The defendant was charged with the murder of two people. The jury had to stay in a hotel overnight because they had not reached a verdict by the end of the first day of discussion. When they stayed at the hotel some members of the jury held a séance using a Ouija board to try and contact the dead victims and ask who had killed them. When the fact that a Ouija board had been used to decide the verdict the defendant requested a retrial and the court of appeal neglected the verdict and ordered a retrial of the case.
Even though most jurors are not very interested in the case they have to try, they may still have prejudices which will affect the verdict. Some jurors may be biased against the police. This is one of the reasons why people with criminal convictions are disqualified from sitting on a jury, because if they have been arrested for wrong reasons or a member of their family has, they will obviously have a grudge against the police. Some jurors are racially prejudiced. If an all white jury have to try a defendant from an ethnic minority, it is normally frowned upon and seen as unfair. For example, in the case R V Gregory (1993), where a juror showed racial overtone.
Jurors are often influenced by media coverage. This happens in high profile cases, when there has been a lot of publicity about the police investigations into a case. For example in the case R vs. West, Rosemary West was convicted for the murder of ten young girls and women, including her daughter. From the time the bodies were first discovered, the case was mentioned in the media quite frequently. Rosemary West appealed against her conviction because the media made it an unfair trial. The court of appeal rejected the appeal. This was also a problem in the case R V Taylor (1993), where the newspapers gave a false impression of a video sequence.
One of the main disadvantages is that cases are very expensive and juries increase the cost as cases last longer.
Some members of the jury really dislike jury service and become bored and therefore hurry the decision, making it an unfair trial. They are also sometimes threatened or bribed by the defendant’s friends or relatives. This is called “jury nobbling”.
The age of 18 is thought to be too young. Some people say that a person of this age has not got enough life experience to make important decisions.
There are many alternatives and improvements that could be made concerning the jury service.
An alternative to a jury is that a single judge could try the case. The problem is that only one person would have the decision and this may be seen as unfair, only having one person to decide the verdict. This occurs in civil cases and some criminal trials in Northern Ireland.
A second alternative to a jury is that a mini jury could hear the case. However, there is a disadvantage of using a mini jury. The jurors would still not have full understanding of most of the cases.
Another alternative is that there could be a panel of judges, instead of a jury. This suggestion is fairer. This allows a balance of views, instead of a verdict by a single person. An advantage of this is that the judges would certainly know more about the legal system than the general public, which would be sitting in a jury. This alternative would probably work best in more complicated trials, for example, fraud cases but the disadvantage is that there are not enough judges in our English legal system to do this and it would be expensive.
I think that there are far too many disadvantages for a trial by jury compared to advantages. I think the jury should be replaced by a panel of judges. There are many advantages to this alternative. Since there are not that many judges, there would simply be fewer judges to try a case, but it would still be more than one person’s opinion on a verdict and that is what makes the trial fair.
Word count- 1829