Business Insider's Mistake: To Disband the Jury

According to Devine, there is a current estimate of 154,000 jury trials each year in the United States.  See Dennis J. Devine, Jury Decision Making: The State of the Science 6 (2012). Even though it is a small number in lawyers' eyes, it can seem like an unnecessary number to lay people. Thus, to do away with jurors might seem like a good idea to some. Business Insider claims that disbanding juries would stave off racial prejudice, keep the unintelligent and unlearned from deciding issues, and shed the financial burden that is jury service.  These may all seem like good ideas (especially to non-lawyers), but to disband the jury increases the risk of racial prejudice, takes responsibility of citizenship away from the people, and leaves a litigant’s fate to one man alone.

Here is why Business Insider is wrong: 

A lawyer’s mind in hearing, “We should disband the jury,” immediately goes to Constitutional concerns, tradition arguments, and principles, and will argue according to legal methodology that juries must stay.  But legal arguments often will not resonate with a non-lawyer.  So, to put it simply, a jury of your peers must be preserved because it is a unique and precious, philosophical, and societal safeguard that keeps you from an unjust result.

Juries Seek Stories; A Judge Sees Too Much

As fact-finders, juries simply assess evidence and answer questions according to the evidence.  But what that evidence includes often comes laden with passion and emotion (which can even be seen in the most boring patent law case).  Juries are a shield and want to protect the innocent.  They spot corruption, they war against the unjust result, and they are eager ears, filled with empathy, for a litigant’s or defendant’s story. 

Juries are humans who seek the integrity of the story. They assess the demeanor of witnesses, parties, attorneys, and the judge. They listen to the waver of voices; they see the twitches in body movement, the tells of an individual.  Juries have the unique opportunity to concentrate their observations: they focus on the person and the story while the judge assesses the legal nuances and validity of the attorney’s arguments.  

Juries, as six to twelve different filters, all perceive the litigant’s story with varying levels of empathy, experience, and background; "[j]urors interpret evidence within the context of their own unique experiences" and therefore extralegal factors such as "one's sex, race, age, [and] personality[] all...have potential for influencing verdicts." Marilyn Chandler Ford, The Role of Extralegal Factors in Jury Verdicts, 11 THE JUST. SYS. J. 16 (1986).  With twelve jurors, these factors will often (or at least have the potential to) balance or cancel out, but a judge has no other peers (with whom he is charged to deliberate) to balance him.  One man's unchecked prejudice is far more dangerous than a group able to deliberate. In agreement, the Supreme Court has determined that a “jury panel should contain a cross-section of individuals” to “ensure impartiality.” The venire members need to be diverse and representative of the society in which they serve so that impartiality can be guaranteed through a jury of peers. Id. at 32. 

In short, each juror brings in their perceptions of the world to the courtroom and deliberates with other egocentric jurors.  Instructed carefully upon their duties, jurors only operate in limited and select areas and assess the evidence together to the best of their abilities, constantly checking the biases of others, coming to a fairer decision than if one man alone assessed the evidence. 

A Judge is Just One Man

A judge, by contrast, is just one man. Unlike jurors, he doesn’t have other peers to check his biases. See Shamena Anwar, The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials, 127 THE Q. J. OF ECON. 1017 (2012).  Additionally, a judge must see all the evidence in order to determine what evidence a jury can (according to the federal laws of evidence) see.  The judge is the gatekeeper and, with evidence alone, knows too much to be unbiased.  In his role, he goes through all the evidence, decides what is not too prejudicial for the jury to see, and then turns over the fact-finding portion to the jury. It is the jury who is unbiased, who sees the admitted evidence, and decides the verdict.

Juries Are Our Buffer

Juries allow the public to see what happens in the courtroom. Juries hear the laws, see if the process works, and have a hands-on experience and opportunity for securing change. Jurors, when assessing the laws, see how the laws function, how they harm or help people, and have an insight that would be far from view without the ability (and responsibility) of the attorneys arguing the law for the society they serve. With bench trials, there is little to protect the parties from the law. The legal determinations made can be black and white and according to the letter of the law. The ability to persuade the judge on an ethical justification is usually harder than explaining the dilemma to a sympathetic jury.

Juries Are Unbiased; A Judge is Consumed by Law

An impartial jury has nothing to gain from one side or another and nothing to lose. They are not worried about precedent, which may cloud or distract the mind of a judge. Juries want stories. They want to be told how much a person is suffering, how to be the heroes and champions for the poor; juries are more willing to listen to sympathy than a judge. They are more likely to have members who empathize with the parties and understand what is at stake.

A judge, however, is worried about precedent. He might (even subconsciously) believe in one side more than the other, simply because of his view of the issue at hand.  And, due to human error, judges can get it wrong too.

If All Else Fails, There Are Other Options  

Jury trials are known as a Constitutional right, but one can seek other avenues. You, as a litigant, can avoid litigation and stick to mediation; you can take a plea bargain; or you can settle. There are other avenues with fact-finding jury trials beyond litigation and removing all litigant’s right to a trial by jury.

Lastly, a Jury Can HELP both sides: 

·      Juries can be easier audiences; they want to know why they should make their decision, beyond the black letter law.

·      Juries have a "B" (about 79-87%) success rate and try to seek the just result to the best of their abilities.

·      Juries can be a buffer between laws that are unjust and can use Jury Nullification to result in justice DESPITE the unjust law.

·      Even if a jury finds the impossible result, it can still be overturned on appeal as a final safeguard against injustice.