Friday 21 November 2014

What American Jury System Problems The Citizens Are Facing

By Ida Dorsey


Certain people help the judges when they decide the verdicts to the criminals. These groups usually consist of twelve members. This set up is common in America.

Nowadays, this set up has typically become corrupted and unfair. Citizens face several American jury system problems that this mechanism could pose. These issues has motioned other activists for its reformation and even its abolition. The following are the most common issues that citizens face.

A hearing usually takes a long time to begin since the court will still be looking for individuals who could possibly be members of a jury. They will be screening numerous potential jurors for this. They will be filtering out those having no criminal records with them, not on parole, and other conditions. If the crime happened in a big city, the selection procedure for jurors will definitely be taking a long time.

The qualification of each member of the jury is also posing another problem. The persons are usually having various professions. Some are working during the day like teachers, small business owners and plumbers, among others. They usually have not completed law schools. As such, they are basing their judgment on their views as well as opinions.

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, the trials that involve the juries should only last for one day. However, due to misunderstandings and other scenarios, the one day trials could last even for one month. Because these hearings require the presence of these people, they in turn may not be productive with their time and even incur losses if they run and operate their own businesses.

There are certain stages for people to file certain cases. Lower courts should hear some charges while the court of appeals will handle the others. However, there are certain cases that reach the need for juries even if they are not necessary. These charges may be totally comical or ridiculous and even children will be able to make sound judgments about them. These are additional burdens to these courts.

The frequency of jury summons may vary. This frequency will depend on how many proceedings certain courts will hear in certain durations of time. For instance, big cities may have bigger numbers of cases filed in their courts. For this matter, they will also summon a lot of jurors. Qualified jurors may only be few in numbers and as such, the courts can summon them several times.

The problems presented are only a few for the mechanism. Numerous organizations are supporting the cause of reforming the jury system. Numerous individuals even want to be totally abolishing this mechanism. The supreme court must be checking and studying the requests to see to it that they will be giving the defendants and the accusers the justice which is due them.




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