I’ve always been confused by this.
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Why would you want a bunch of randoms to decide your fate, and not the actual judge with a law degree and years of experience?
Why do those people have more power than the judge? They can decide anything they want and the judge is basically just the guy who signs and does the paperwork.
In: 2634
Because the people who founded our legal system believed that governments can become corrupt, judges may abuse their power, and that the law should be upheld by the community themselves. So before punishing someone for breaking the law (in most cases), they get to go before a jury of their peers, and let the jury make the decision. A jury of non-lawyers is much harder to bribe or corrupt, and since they aren’t being paid by the government (besides a tiny juror fee), they don’t have any duty to give the state a win in any case.
If you’re being found guilty of breaking the law, it’s because your neighbors examined the evidence and found it to be true, beyond reasonable doubt. This means that the community has power over itself, rather than being at the total mercy of the government.
By employing your peers to judge guilt, it removes the ability for the state to employ spurious charges on a person and use the judges employed by the state to find them guilty. It shouldn’t be up to the state to decide what is criminal or not, it should be the people who which the government represent.
Also the judge sentences the person if found guilty, the jury only asses guilt
In the US, defendants have the right to a trial by jury, but they can waive that and request that their case be decided by a judge instead.
The jury gets sworn in. They have a legal obligation to follow the law. They aren’t supposed to decide the case on any other basis than the law as explained to them by the judge and the evidence and testimony presented during the trial.
The judge is not just someone who signs and does paperwork, they’re more of the referee. Things like what is, and isn’t allowed, what each side can and cannot use as evidence, all legal procedure is followed, etc. This has a huge impact on a case. Things like “this piece of evidence was not allowed because it was ruled that it was not properly gathered” or “that line of questioning is irrelevant and therefore cannot be used to make an argument” have a huge impact. Judges are also part of jury selection… both sides and the judge make choices on who to include on a jury.
The jury does receive specific instructions on what the exact text of the law says, and what elements there are to it.
It’s not just “you random 12 people better know what constitutes Title 18 of the US Code.”
The judge will give instructions on what is to be considered, what legal level it needs to rise to(ex “what is malice aforethought”).
The idea is if you can convince 12 of 12 people, with minimum bias, that a person did it, they likely did.
Opposed to a judge who is impartial, but also employed by the government… and in some instances has been less than impartial.
It should also be pointed out, a bench trial is a trial by judge and can be requested by the defendant.
The most important part of self government is applying the law. Government is derived by the concent of the governed .
The fact that they’re a bunch of randoms is a feature, not a bug. As people unrelated to the case, they (ostensibly) are not bringing bias to the proceedings since they should have been thoroughly vetted by the defense and prosecution during jury selection. Since they (ostensibly) have nothing to gain from your conviction or non conviction, they’re preferable to, say, a judge who wants to look “tough on crime” and speeds through convictions in order to get elected. Or perhaps a judge with his or her own prejudices based on race, ethnicity, or class status–this is why the “jury of your *peers*” part of the constitution is so important and in the modern day means that there’s generally a drive to keep juries demographically neutral. There are cases where a woman killed her physically abusive husband and was tried by a jury consisting solely of men and they found her guilty within 15 minutes simply because they didn’t like the idea of a woman defending herself.
It should be noted that the judge actually does more than sign and do paperwork, as they’re able to throw out evidence that is deemed unsatisfactory, hold counsel accountable if they do something that’s considered outside the realm of ethics (leading the witness, badgering the witness, etc), and generally keep things moving smoothly while protecting the rights of the witnesseses/defendants involved. Also, in civil court the judge often makes the decisions, so it’s not as though they’re just sitting on their thumbs all day.
>They can decide anything they want and the judge is basically just the guy who signs and does the paperwork.
The jury can decide guilty or not guilty on the specific laws they are instructed to consider, or they can be unable to reach a decision. That’s the extent of their authority.
They do not decide what evidence or testimony is allowed in the trial. They do not get an opinion on what crimes the person should be charged with. They do not determine the sentencing guidelines for the crimes or where the person should be sentenced within those guidelines.
I was on a grand jury for a six-month period during which we considered two unrelated indictments for murder. I left that experience with a promise to myself that if I’m ever a defendant in a criminal proceeding, I will seriously consider opting for a bench trial where I waive my right to a jury trial and instead have a judge decide my fate.
I made that promise to myself because I realized during my grand jury experience there are a lot of really stupid people out there in society. The questions and discussion points brought up by some of my fellow grand jurors—not all, but more than a couple—gave insight into their ability (or lack of) to think critically and work problems in a logical manner. I’m not sure I’d want a bunch of people like that with stunted mental capacity deciding my fate.
Trial by jury came into English law in 1215, when the Magna Carta severely curtailed the king’s powers. It was no long his decision, but the decision of ordinary people like you, as to whether you were guilty or not.
The main exception to this is a military court martial, when the decision made by a panel of officers.
This system would have been in place when America was a British colony, and, even though it turns out you didn’t like our tea, you still kept this as a policy.
> in the USA
Many legal systems around the world use juries to some extent. Many also have some cases decided by full-time officials with little or no formal legal training, with titles like “magistrate” or “lay judge”.
> Why would you want a bunch of randoms
There is often some scope to choose whether you want a jury or not.
> and not the actual judge with a law degree and years of experience
The problem is, most legal processes combine questions about what the law says, which are best answered by people with legal training, with questions about all manner of factual matters. Knowing a lot about how the law works does not necessarily help you decide which of two witnesses is lying, or whether some DNA evidence could be faulty, or whether a business falsified its accounts on purpose or by accident. I think it’s fair to say that nobody has developed a very effective system to answer such questions. Sometimes judges are put in charge of this stuff too, sometimes jurors, and sometimes a mixture of the two. In a jury trial, the judge will typically rule on matters of law (e.g. whether X evidence is allowed, what needs to be proven to show that someone is guilty of Y offence) and then instruct the jury on what factual questions they need to answer.
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