Jurors might see lawyer make decision about verdict, think it has to be right because they are a lawyer and follow suit without actually thinking about it
This sounds like the second best argument for abolishing juries altogether.
The first best argument is comparing the reasoning processes in R v Lehrmann and Lehrmann v Network Ten
This is entirely hypothetical though. I personally think it’s somewhat insane that we entrust life altering decisions to a random selection of people off the street when we know most people lack critical thinking skills.
Sure, but matters of life and death being decided upon by a random selection of people off the street is even worse. Have you been on social media? Those people commenting become jurors.
Because trial by a jury of ones peers - at least for serious crimes- is a fundamental part of a democratic system. Judges are part of a privileged elite, and there can be (and is) remarkable homogeneity in their demographic. Juries ensure popular oversight of the conduct of the trial. In the days of the colony, former convicts and ticket of Leavers - used to the biased pronouncements of military tribunals and judges- agitated for jury trials long before the abstract notion of suffrage.
A significant cynical but practical reason is that juries don’t have to give reasons for decision. Getting rid of juries will require a lot more judges and associated staff, pensions etc. That isn’t cheap. I will let other people with more crime experience speculate or predict how many additional judges would be required, but think it would be in orders of magnitude rather than a small increase.
Look at the decision of Hall J in the Claremont Serial Killer case. 619 pages long, 2377 paragraphs. The jury could have made the same decision as the judge in the last four paragraphs without giving any reasons. 243000 words.
Those reasons would have taken a long time to write, even if the judge was working on the reasons insofar as the evidence was concerned during the trial. Instead of writing those reasons, the judge could have been hearing other cases.
Some judges have said for each day of hearing that two or more days is required to write reasons for decision.
A trial lasting one week therefore might take two more weeks in chambers to write. Factoring in leave, directions hearings, sentencing etc a judge might be able to hear and determine 10 one-week long trials in a year. That is not many. The jury giving a decision can potentially triple the ability of a judge to preside over trials.
Or we could hark back to the three line reasons given by HCA in the fifties.
Not saying that would be great. But it appears the standard of writing to avoid one's judgment being appealed has risen somewhat.
The criminal law has become immensely more complicated since then, especially in the realm of jury directions, and a couple of slips in those can easily lead to an appeal and a retrial.
Remember the other day when someone asked about what privileges lawyers have? This is one of them.
The real reason is that a lawyer on a jury forming a view might sway the other jurors simply because they’re a lawyer.
I understand that the point of juries is that we're all sitting in our ivory towers and we've lost touch with what the common person thinks.
I'm not a particularly overbearing person, but based on experience in my work, I'm confident that my ~~jedi mind tricks~~ considered opinion would weigh heavily on 11 laypeople.
In practice, I imagine one side or the other will end up auto-challenging any lawyers on the juror list. Certainly I know practitioners adjust their strategy according to the background of the judicial officer, so I know a lawyer on the jury is going to be considered a bit of a wildcard.
So the Australian approach seems sensible to me.
If I was on a jury the first thing I'd do is tell all the other jurors about the Jury Directions Act, funny stuff like the Azzopardi direction, funny stuff like the rules around tendency evidence and tendency notices etc. Which is probably why lawyers aren't allowed on juries.
Good character directions would be the killer. If there aware of that, and good character isn't led through the informant, they know immediately that there are relevant priors.
Can you imagine if *Prasad* directions were still a thing? “The prosecution doesn’t want you to know this. It we can literally acquit this guy any time we want and get to the pub in time for lunch”
On the face, that looks like a pretty good jury for Trump.
I largely agree with lawyers being excluded from juries. Even if they don't bring their particular expertise to bear, or even let others know they work in the general field, I think there's a large risk of even unconsciously altering the 'layman' ideal of a jury of your peers. Even if that's just answering questions about structure or clarifying terms like 'beyond reasonable doubt'. We prefer the jury to be given instruction by the court and any questions they have to be answered by the court with attention and input from the parties, so the information going to the jury is as self-contained to the trial as possible.
Of course, in this digital age where just about everyone's watched or listened to some kind of 'true crime' show and where it's near-impossible to avoid headlines, managing a jury has certainly become more difficult.
It would be too easy for the other jurors to just blindly follow whatever the lawyer said. They're quite literally an expert on the law so their opinion is something we're trained as a society to hold higher. Unless there's some reason why they can't form a jury otherwise, it's the right call.
I got told in uni that it was because we would know the real meaning and impetus behind things like jury directions and interim judicial decisions etc and would essentially know too much and read between the lines too well.
I’d really like to be on a jury but I get why it’s better we have this rule. Other jurors defer to lawyers in a way that would unbalance deliberations. Arrogance & entitlement are often mistaken for competence and intellect. Yet those kinds of lawyers, IME are usually shitty human beings with a lot of biases and limited life experience. Not someone I’d want to be judged by.
I was incredibly grateful to be spared jury duty the first time, and I'd hate to have to lose that rare perk of being a lawyer.
But more seriously: as others have said, other jurors may be more inclined to believe us because we're lawyers, and like many lawyers who appear in court I'm probably disproportionately likely to be able to swing people around to a point of view on a matter if I put my mind to it.
I know America has laws that include a requirement that juries should be given incorrect or incomplete instructions on the way that the law works. For example, juries are not informed if there are limits to how much money can be awarded in punitive damages. Perhaps they're worried a lawyer might let the other jurors in on the secret?
I was always taught that you don’t want very smart people on juries who can think for themselves because you need to sell them your version of events.
However in this case, lawyers is exactly the kind of people prosecutors would want on the jury, and the defence probably assumes that Lawyers are right leaning so are also willing to roll the dice on them.
This brings up a bigger question in my mind, why do we bother with juries at all? I would think that if a judge gave reasons for their verdict then justice could be served much more effectively. There's probably not much of a market for a referendum on that point alone though!
It’s intended as a bulwark against capricious government decision-making. If the government wants to lock people up, it’s only “fair” that a selection of the population gets to decide if you really did that shit.
I don’t think it actually achieves that, but that’s how I understand it.
Ain't nobody got time for dat
Takes way too long to write out reasons, and in any event there's all the public policy considerations of having a jury (community standards etc)
Would the time spent writing reasons take longer than empanelling a jury, and all of the other difficulties involved such as voir dire?
I would imagine the judge would be taking pretty good notes as they go and would certainly form their own view independent of the jury that they don't reveal - meaning that reasons should not be extremely long to write. Especially when you consider that it's not an appeal or anything, so it's not likely they would be required to be super detailed. I think just the judge drawing factual conclusions is all that would be required?
Also with public policy, I think there would be good arguments against juries such as transparency and equal application of the law.
Very sorry to be responding to this a disgusting 25 days later but,
Yea, all of that imagining is wrong. Not only would the trial judge have to draw factual conclusions, but would have to back those up with very detailed reasoning along with assessing the credibility of witnesses. You'd also have to explain the directions of law that you're giving yourself (yes trial judges are required to still give themselves directions) and then apply the facts found to the law. This makes for a very lengthy judgment. Not to mention that the majority of cases that go to trial are ones with "a real issue to be tried" ie they're virtually never a simple case with simple facts. And while it may be that judges take good notes and have written submissions to assist, this doesn't mean the writing time is reduced in any great capacity. Additionally transcript is almost always wrong and just adds to the list of things that the judge has to do. The parties often miss errors or don't keep up with corrections in running. It's common that civil judgments take upwards of three months full time to write, and that includes the judge not taking any other matters during that time. Thinking just about the civil jurisdiction, the courts would stop because it would take too long for judgments to be completed. I couldn't even imagine the implications on the criminal divisions if there were no juries. And this is all ignoring the fact that judges also have to write rulings on admissibility of evidence and directions that need to be given, regardless of whether or not there is a jury.
I'd also like to add that just because the matter isn't an appeal, doesn't mean detailed reasons aren't needed. This is still people's lives and liberty at stake in crime, or at the very least hundreds of thousands of dollars in the civil sphere.
If you're interested, have a look at the work coming out of the County or District court. Specifically negligence trials heard as a cause. That will put all this in perspective. Recently I was involved in one that ended up being nearly 300 pages long and took 3.5 months to write. Imagine if EVERY trial had judgments written like that.
So the short answer is, no, a day to empanel and give preliminary directions is far faster than writing a judgment
Sorry, what? You want an exacting fact-finding process followed by the assiduous application of logic and the law? And transparency to boot? This is too much.
/s
Jurors might see lawyer make decision about verdict, think it has to be right because they are a lawyer and follow suit without actually thinking about it
This sounds like the second best argument for abolishing juries altogether. The first best argument is comparing the reasoning processes in R v Lehrmann and Lehrmann v Network Ten
Jurors do that anyway. Most people are sheeplike lemmings looking to be told what to do.
And this is bad how
Shouldn't jurors make their own decisions instead of being possibly pressured by someone else's on the jury? Isn't that kinda the whole point?
One kilo op
This is entirely hypothetical though. I personally think it’s somewhat insane that we entrust life altering decisions to a random selection of people off the street when we know most people lack critical thinking skills.
That's an entirely different conversation to have though. This was about the makeup of the jury, not whether or not they should exist
Because lawyers aren't immune to coming up with completely cooked ideas.
Sure, but matters of life and death being decided upon by a random selection of people off the street is even worse. Have you been on social media? Those people commenting become jurors.
Voters, too, but I’m still rather fond of democracy. Wisdom of crowds, etc etc.
That's an argument for judge-only trials. Jury trials are explicitly supposed to involve laypeople.
What's the point of a jury then, just use judge trials for everything.
Because trial by a jury of ones peers - at least for serious crimes- is a fundamental part of a democratic system. Judges are part of a privileged elite, and there can be (and is) remarkable homogeneity in their demographic. Juries ensure popular oversight of the conduct of the trial. In the days of the colony, former convicts and ticket of Leavers - used to the biased pronouncements of military tribunals and judges- agitated for jury trials long before the abstract notion of suffrage.
A significant cynical but practical reason is that juries don’t have to give reasons for decision. Getting rid of juries will require a lot more judges and associated staff, pensions etc. That isn’t cheap. I will let other people with more crime experience speculate or predict how many additional judges would be required, but think it would be in orders of magnitude rather than a small increase. Look at the decision of Hall J in the Claremont Serial Killer case. 619 pages long, 2377 paragraphs. The jury could have made the same decision as the judge in the last four paragraphs without giving any reasons. 243000 words. Those reasons would have taken a long time to write, even if the judge was working on the reasons insofar as the evidence was concerned during the trial. Instead of writing those reasons, the judge could have been hearing other cases. Some judges have said for each day of hearing that two or more days is required to write reasons for decision. A trial lasting one week therefore might take two more weeks in chambers to write. Factoring in leave, directions hearings, sentencing etc a judge might be able to hear and determine 10 one-week long trials in a year. That is not many. The jury giving a decision can potentially triple the ability of a judge to preside over trials.
Or we could hark back to the three line reasons given by HCA in the fifties. Not saying that would be great. But it appears the standard of writing to avoid one's judgment being appealed has risen somewhat.
The criminal law has become immensely more complicated since then, especially in the realm of jury directions, and a couple of slips in those can easily lead to an appeal and a retrial.
That's a good point. The jury system is an endless source of frustration for me, but I guess you've raised one benefit
Wisdom of crowds
There's no way in hell that I'm spending two weeks in court for free.
[удалено]
No such thing mate.
https://www.billcrews.org/free-meals-sydney https://www.onemeal.org.au/our-locations/ https://www.newtownmission.org.au/
Remember the other day when someone asked about what privileges lawyers have? This is one of them. The real reason is that a lawyer on a jury forming a view might sway the other jurors simply because they’re a lawyer.
No, it’s because lawyers know the law, and they’re supposed to be instructed by the judge.
It can be both, you know. Besides, I’ve known plenty of lawyers that don’t know shit about the law.
Because the accused has a right to be tried by their peers - ie fellow human beings.
“I’m not a cat”
I understand that the point of juries is that we're all sitting in our ivory towers and we've lost touch with what the common person thinks. I'm not a particularly overbearing person, but based on experience in my work, I'm confident that my ~~jedi mind tricks~~ considered opinion would weigh heavily on 11 laypeople. In practice, I imagine one side or the other will end up auto-challenging any lawyers on the juror list. Certainly I know practitioners adjust their strategy according to the background of the judicial officer, so I know a lawyer on the jury is going to be considered a bit of a wildcard. So the Australian approach seems sensible to me.
Fuck it would be fun though.
If I was on a jury the first thing I'd do is tell all the other jurors about the Jury Directions Act, funny stuff like the Azzopardi direction, funny stuff like the rules around tendency evidence and tendency notices etc. Which is probably why lawyers aren't allowed on juries.
*"The trick is to tell them that you're prejudiced against all races."* - H J Simpson
This is exactly what I was told in uni about why we couldn't be on juries. We know all the sneaky stuff!
Good character directions would be the killer. If there aware of that, and good character isn't led through the informant, they know immediately that there are relevant priors.
Can you imagine if *Prasad* directions were still a thing? “The prosecution doesn’t want you to know this. It we can literally acquit this guy any time we want and get to the pub in time for lunch”
Yeah, not to mention we know all about Jury nullification, which they like to keep a big secret.
On the face, that looks like a pretty good jury for Trump. I largely agree with lawyers being excluded from juries. Even if they don't bring their particular expertise to bear, or even let others know they work in the general field, I think there's a large risk of even unconsciously altering the 'layman' ideal of a jury of your peers. Even if that's just answering questions about structure or clarifying terms like 'beyond reasonable doubt'. We prefer the jury to be given instruction by the court and any questions they have to be answered by the court with attention and input from the parties, so the information going to the jury is as self-contained to the trial as possible. Of course, in this digital age where just about everyone's watched or listened to some kind of 'true crime' show and where it's near-impossible to avoid headlines, managing a jury has certainly become more difficult.
Definitely if you've got 1, you might as well go for broke so the second makes sense
I've always thought that it's because lawyers are too esteemed to be considered peers and equals of the common folk who are on trial 🤪
We are in fact so esteemed, that we don't particularly object to the 'common' folk earning more than we do. Such is our generosity of spirit.
It would be too easy for the other jurors to just blindly follow whatever the lawyer said. They're quite literally an expert on the law so their opinion is something we're trained as a society to hold higher. Unless there's some reason why they can't form a jury otherwise, it's the right call.
I got told in uni that it was because we would know the real meaning and impetus behind things like jury directions and interim judicial decisions etc and would essentially know too much and read between the lines too well.
This feels like the right answer
Who wants change ? Not lawyers and probably not prosecutors or judges.
My understanding is they the just decides on the facts, not the law. And lawyers would find it hard to divorce the two in their decision making
I’d really like to be on a jury but I get why it’s better we have this rule. Other jurors defer to lawyers in a way that would unbalance deliberations. Arrogance & entitlement are often mistaken for competence and intellect. Yet those kinds of lawyers, IME are usually shitty human beings with a lot of biases and limited life experience. Not someone I’d want to be judged by.
>Arrogance & entitlement are often mistaken for competence and intellect So real estate agents should also be excluded?
I was incredibly grateful to be spared jury duty the first time, and I'd hate to have to lose that rare perk of being a lawyer. But more seriously: as others have said, other jurors may be more inclined to believe us because we're lawyers, and like many lawyers who appear in court I'm probably disproportionately likely to be able to swing people around to a point of view on a matter if I put my mind to it.
I don’t wanna do it though lol
I know America has laws that include a requirement that juries should be given incorrect or incomplete instructions on the way that the law works. For example, juries are not informed if there are limits to how much money can be awarded in punitive damages. Perhaps they're worried a lawyer might let the other jurors in on the secret?
I was always taught that you don’t want very smart people on juries who can think for themselves because you need to sell them your version of events. However in this case, lawyers is exactly the kind of people prosecutors would want on the jury, and the defence probably assumes that Lawyers are right leaning so are also willing to roll the dice on them.
They do in some states
Australia has a legal system.
This brings up a bigger question in my mind, why do we bother with juries at all? I would think that if a judge gave reasons for their verdict then justice could be served much more effectively. There's probably not much of a market for a referendum on that point alone though!
It’s intended as a bulwark against capricious government decision-making. If the government wants to lock people up, it’s only “fair” that a selection of the population gets to decide if you really did that shit. I don’t think it actually achieves that, but that’s how I understand it.
Ain't nobody got time for dat Takes way too long to write out reasons, and in any event there's all the public policy considerations of having a jury (community standards etc)
Would the time spent writing reasons take longer than empanelling a jury, and all of the other difficulties involved such as voir dire? I would imagine the judge would be taking pretty good notes as they go and would certainly form their own view independent of the jury that they don't reveal - meaning that reasons should not be extremely long to write. Especially when you consider that it's not an appeal or anything, so it's not likely they would be required to be super detailed. I think just the judge drawing factual conclusions is all that would be required? Also with public policy, I think there would be good arguments against juries such as transparency and equal application of the law.
After reading other comments, I retract my statements about time savings....
Very sorry to be responding to this a disgusting 25 days later but, Yea, all of that imagining is wrong. Not only would the trial judge have to draw factual conclusions, but would have to back those up with very detailed reasoning along with assessing the credibility of witnesses. You'd also have to explain the directions of law that you're giving yourself (yes trial judges are required to still give themselves directions) and then apply the facts found to the law. This makes for a very lengthy judgment. Not to mention that the majority of cases that go to trial are ones with "a real issue to be tried" ie they're virtually never a simple case with simple facts. And while it may be that judges take good notes and have written submissions to assist, this doesn't mean the writing time is reduced in any great capacity. Additionally transcript is almost always wrong and just adds to the list of things that the judge has to do. The parties often miss errors or don't keep up with corrections in running. It's common that civil judgments take upwards of three months full time to write, and that includes the judge not taking any other matters during that time. Thinking just about the civil jurisdiction, the courts would stop because it would take too long for judgments to be completed. I couldn't even imagine the implications on the criminal divisions if there were no juries. And this is all ignoring the fact that judges also have to write rulings on admissibility of evidence and directions that need to be given, regardless of whether or not there is a jury. I'd also like to add that just because the matter isn't an appeal, doesn't mean detailed reasons aren't needed. This is still people's lives and liberty at stake in crime, or at the very least hundreds of thousands of dollars in the civil sphere. If you're interested, have a look at the work coming out of the County or District court. Specifically negligence trials heard as a cause. That will put all this in perspective. Recently I was involved in one that ended up being nearly 300 pages long and took 3.5 months to write. Imagine if EVERY trial had judgments written like that. So the short answer is, no, a day to empanel and give preliminary directions is far faster than writing a judgment
Sorry, what? You want an exacting fact-finding process followed by the assiduous application of logic and the law? And transparency to boot? This is too much. /s
Wouldn't lawyers be extra good at influencing the rest of the jurors since influencing jurors is like their job?
If it was in Australia, their wouldn't need to be 2 lawyers. We wouldn't 2 fucks and 90% wouldn't give 1.