The American Jury System Problems Faced By Citizens

By Ida Dorsey


Judges are assisted by certain people when verdicts are decided on criminals. Twelve members are usually compose these groups. America commonly use this mechanism.

Sadly, the set up has become unfair and corrupted nowadays. Some American jury system problems posed by this mechanism are faced by the citizens. Other activists have called for its reformation as well as its abolition due to these issues. The following common issues are faced by citizens.

The hearings usually take a long time to start since the courts will still have to look for individuals that they could possibly install in the juries. They will have to screen a lot of possible jurors in this case. They have to filter out those with no criminal records, not on parole, and other such conditions. If the crimes happened on big cities, one can only imagine how long the selection process of these jurors will be.

The qualifications of the members of these juries pose another problem. These individuals typically have different professions. Some could have day jobs like teachers, plumbers, and small business owners. They typically did not complete college degrees in Law. As such, they will usually base their judgments on their own opinions and views.

The legal terms involved in different cases might not be known to them, as well. These legal terms will have to be explained to the persons before the trials will be continued. The explanations will also lengthen the time that should be spent for the hearings. There are times, as well, where these terms might not be fully understood by the individuals after the explanations have been given.

Ideally, a trial that needs the involvement of a jury should only take a single day. However, because of situations like misunderstandings, a trial could be taking a month. Since a hearing is requiring the presence of each individual, they might be productive during this time and even incurring losses if they are running and operating their respective businesses.

Cases could be filed by people following certain stages. Some charges should be heard by lower courts while the others are handled by the court of appeals. However, the necessity of juries might be reached by certain cases even though these are not necessary. The charges could be totally ridiculous or comical and sound judgments can even be made by children for them. These are further loads to the courts.

The frequency to be summoned for a jury could vary. The frequency is dependent on the number of proceedings that will be heard by the courts in certain time periods. For instance, many cases could be filed to the courts of big cities. For this matter, lots of jurors will also be summoned. There could only be a few number of qualified jurors. With such, they could be summoned for several times by the courts.

These are only several problems of the mechanism. A lot of organizations support the reformation of the jury system. However, a lot of individuals also want to abolish this mechanism entirely. The supreme courts should be able to check and study these requests to make sure that they will give accusers and defendants the justice that they deserve.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment