 What is a Jury - Jury is a group of persons selected according to law and given the

power to decide the questions of fact and return a verdict in the case submitted to
them.
 Characteristics of a Jury:-
1. Group of People – Adult citizens picked from a voter list
2. Selected according to law – A panel is formed after selecting citizens from the
voters list and assigned a courtroom where they are made to sit randomly.
They are then questioned by the judge or/and by the attorneys. Attorneys can
raise objection if they feel someone is unfit for being on the panel. In common
law countries, both defense and prosecution can object to a juror. This
principle is called Voir Dire
3. Decide questions of fact and return the verdict – role of the jury is to listen to
the trial and thereby decide and reach a verdict guilty or not guilty while
exercising reason as per jury instructions and rules of law as informed by the
judge. The penalty is then decided by the judge.

After hearing the evidence and often jury instructions from the judge, the group retires for
deliberation, to consider a verdict. The majority required for a verdict varies. In some cases it
must be unanimous while in other jurisdictions, it must be a majority. A jury that cant reach a
verdict is called a hung jury.

 Relevance of jury system in India – Jury trial in India was a western innovation.
Earlier justice was administered through panchayats where panchas were chosen from
a particular caste, tribe, locality or trade, but that is not analogous to English Trial by
Jury in criminal cases. The first case decided by an English jury in India happened in
Madras in 1665, for which Ascentia Dawes (probably a British woman) was charged
by a grand jury with the murder of her slave girl, and a petty jury, with six
Englishmen and six Portuguese, found her not guilty. With the development of the
East India Company empire in India, the jury system was implemented inside a dual
system of courts: In Presidency Towns (Calcutta, Madras, Bombay), there were
Crown Courts and in criminal cases juries had to judge British and European people
(as a privilege) and in some cases Indian people; and in the territories outside the
Presidency Towns (called "moffussil"), there were Company Courts (composed with
Company officials) without jury to judge most of the cases implying indigenous
people.
After the Crown Government of India (Raj) adopted the Indian Penal Code (1860)
and the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure (1861, amended in 1872, 1882, 1898), the
criminal jury was obligatory only in the High Courts of the Presidency Towns;
elsewhere, it was optional and rarely used. According sections 274 and 275 of the
Code of Criminal Procedure, the jury was composed from 3 (for smaller offences
judged in session courts) to 9 (for severe offences judges in High Courts) men; and
when the accused were European or American, at least half of the jurors had to be
European or American men.
 The jury found no place in the 1950 Indian Constitution, and it was ignored in many
Indian states. The Law Commission recommended its abolition in 1958 in its 14th
Report. Jury trials were abolished in India in most courts except for Matrimonial
Disputes of Parsis by a very discrete process during the 1960s, finishing with the 1973
Code of Criminal Procedure, which is still in force today.
Parsis in India can legally use Jury System to decide divorces wherein randomly
selected members called 'delegates' from the community decide the fact of the
matrimonial disputes of Parsis. Jury system for Parsi Matrimonial dispute cases is a
mix of Panchayat system and Jury system found in US etc. countries. The law which
governs this is 'The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936' as amended in 1988.

Mahatma Gandhi was unconvinced by the superiority of untrained juries in

comparison towards trained judges for future independent India. According to him the
judiciary should be independent from religious and caste prejudices. When Gandhi
was assassinated in 1948, a special court decided the case without jury who sentenced
Godse to death. It was a argued that a “vindictive jury” would have frustrated justice
in a climate of political violence.

In 1959 Nanavati shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted by a Bombay Jury (majority
of 8 to 1). According to law, the verdict was returned to the High Court. There he was
sentenced to life imprisonment which was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1961.
Verdict was perverse and influenced by media.
During 1960s jury trial was abolished in India by a very discreet process, finishing
with the 1973 CrPC .

 Pros and Cons of Jury –

1. People from different backgrounds in a jury, so individual prejudices maybe
cancelled out
2. Jury represents common public so are more likely to judge in line with
generally accepted values of society
3. Discussions among jury are more likely to lead more thorough considerations
of all aspects of the case.
4. Difficult to corrupt 12 jurors than to corrupt one or three judges. Acts as an
important source of check against the state power.
5. Jury trials educate citizens about self-government.
6. Jury is more likely to provide a sympathetic judgement than a fairer
judgement.
7. Another issue with jury trials is the potential for jurors to be swayed by
prejudice, including racial, religious and various other considerations. It is
considered bizarre and risky for a person's fate to be put into the hands of
untrained laymen.
 8. Jury trials in multi-cultural countries with a history of ethnic tensions may be
problematic, and lead to juries being unduly biased and partial.
9. A major issue in jury trials is the secretive nature of the process. While
proponents may say that secrecy allows the jury to remain impartial by
protecting it from undue pressure or attention, opponents contend that this
prevents there from being a transparent trial.
10. One issue that has been raised is the ability of a jury to fully understand
statistical or scientific evidence.
11. There is no other part of the constitution that is so open to the public, where
ordinary people participate in decisions of such immediate importance and
wield real power.
12. Juries bring with them the freshness and insights of those who are new to the
system and have not become case-hardened or cynical.

 Jury System in USA –

1. It took the United States a while to recognize the right to a jury in all criminal
cases, state or federal, felony or misdemeanour, but the present state of the law
is that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees a jury trial to
anyone facing a potential penalty of at least six months' imprisonment.
2. The Constitution guarantees a jury of one's "peers," which has been further
interpreted by the courts to mean a fair cross-section of one's community. A
jury is selected and impaneled before the start of a trial in a process called
"voir dire,"
3. The jury then hears the evidence against the defendant, potential defenses, and
weighs the evidence to determine whether it satisfies the charged criminal
offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. It's then the jury's duty to gather together,
discuss the evidence, and, once the necessary consensus is reached, render a
verdict of guilty or not guilty in a given case.
4. A primary strength of the jury trial is that it acts as a check to unfettered
prosecutorial power. Prosecutors have a tremendous amount of power when
deciding whether to charge a defendant with a crime, as well as what charges
to bring. However, they must make this charging decision understanding that a
group of individuals, entirely unknown to them, will be deciding their case
after they present the evidence.
5. Appointed judges might be beholden to politics and the people who appointed
them. Jurors, on the other hand, aren't appointed and instead serve on a jury as
part of their civic duties.
6. The jury trial is a vital part of America’s system of checks and balances. Jury
service is your chance to have a voice in the judicial branch of government.
The founding fathers included jury trials in the constitution because jury
trials prevent tyranny
.

 Jury System in Australia –

1. Citizens have two mandatory obligations – voting and jury service.
2. Lawyers play a major role in making the laws in parliament. Judges then apply
the laws. If juries weren’t used, lawyers would have a monopoly over the law.
Lawyers have their own specialised language in which they communicate
among themselves. Including juries in the legal system forces lawyers to use
common language.
3. Jurors are randomly selected from the Australian electoral roll. Randomly
selected citizens will receive a summons to attend court. Once the jurors arrive
at the courthouse, they wait to be randomly chosen to go to a specific
courtroom as part of a jury panel.
4. Once in the courtroom, a potential juror’s name (or allocated number) may be
pulled out of a box. That potential juror can then either seek to be excused
(because perhaps they know someone involved in the trial), take a seat in the
jury box, or be removed from the jury by one of the parties to the case. This is
known as the “peremptory challenge” process.
5. Jurors are forbidden from having any prior intimate knowledge of the trial,
from privately communicating with anyone involved in the trial and from
doing their own research. Maintaining the impartiality of jurors has become
problematic in the digital age. Jurors are told by the judge not to look at any
media reports on their case. But jurors on trials of high profile defendants may
not be able to avoid the barrage of negative pre-trial publicity. US research
suggests jurors who are exposed to negative publicity are significantly more
likely to judge the defendant guilty compared to subjects exposed to less pre-
trial publicity.
6. Jury secrecy means we have no accurate way of knowing whether juries are
getting it “right”. Australian jurors are forbidden from discussing their
deliberations with anyone, including why they came to a decision.