The US Constitution
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. (Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America)
The
Sixth Amendment is the start of the process; frequently we hear the phrase, "jury of one's peers". I'll offer
this website for a closer examination:
Some of the most significant decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court controlling jury composition, moreover, have been based not on the Sixth Amendment but on the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws. "
While a jury of one's peers is not expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, an "impartial jury of the state and district" shall be seated. State and district lend toward the idea of a jury of one's peers, and when combined with the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which reads (in part, 14.1)
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
Here we find a guarantee of "due process", and also of "equal protection". And this is where the idea of a jury of one's peers becomes more concrete.
Two ideas, then, necessarily reflect a jury of one's peers in this light:
• The jury from the state and district
should represent the community in which the crime was committed. It's one of the reasons the race of the jury became so important. When an inner-city minority stands accused before a middle-class, all-white jury, s/he doesn't have a prayer, even if innocent. Racial issues and juries are believed to be a contributing factor to the ethnic imbalances on death row. Philadelphia saw a death row inmate win a new trial due to jury selection problems:
A Pennsylvania judge overturned the conviction of William Basemore, saying the prosecutor engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination during jury selection. The prosecutor eliminated 19 potential jurors, all of whom were black. The judge found that there was "a conscious strategy to exclude" black jurors. The same prosecutor, Jack McMahon, had been videotaped in the 1980s instructing a group of young prosecutors on how to exclude certain types of black jurors from trials. (Associated Press, Dec. 20, 2001). Commonwealth v. Basemore.
This is why it becomes crucial to represent the community properly in juries. This does, in fact, fit a broad application of the word "peers".
• What seals the deal, though, is that the jury must be
impartial. The government is allowed to pay jurors because it is not allowed to deprive them of their time without recompense; so much for civic duty. But, nonetheless,
professional jurors are more directly paid than civilian jurors.
In more subjective terms, a jury of one's peers has greater empathy and sympathy toward the accused, an essential condition in a court where the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and in a justice system that draws fine distinctions on the law. As an interesting aside, I should probably look into the shift in philosophy. It used to be that the public convicted the accused before their trial--we used the term "criminal's rights" to describe the Miranda Act. But about the same time that the public conscience began reacting to the jury situation to any effective end, the financiers were under the gun. A guy embezzling millions or ripping people off with phony investments will likely get an acquittal from a "jury of his peers"; that is, people of the community of equal standing. But they didn't get that, either, and now that the rich white folks got smacked by unsympathetic juries ....
And it's not so much a matter of getting off when one is guilty, either. Rather, it's that in this country, a lot of stuff is only a crime depending on what neighborhood you come from.
What works to a prosecutor's advantage with a "foreign" jury is the stupid notion that what one sees in court is all there is. We see the difference between documented and experienced reality, and a jury of one's peers might, in fact, understand something about vocal inflection, about body language, and about the formation of attitudes. A sympathetic jury suffers less communication difficulty. Take the OJ trial, for instance. Most of us can conclude that yes, he is guilty of the crime he was accused of. However, by the rules of the court, the state did not prove its case--believe me, I had the time to watch the trial. But people still griped about the jury, and took it up with the black community in the form of a bunch of people letting a guilty guy go. No. What it turned out to be was a bunch of people who were just far enough off the "mainstream" that they weren't going to hand the prosecutors any gifts, and when all was said and done, those gifts were what was needed to convict the defendant. A jury of your peers is going to be understanding toward you as a defendant. A professional jury at least runs the danger of being too educated to understand the common problems between people that become uncommon.
What, for instance, are the prerequisites to be a professional juror?
And, having said that, I leave you with this
article from FindLaw.
Juries are essential to liberty. At their best they are the "bulwark of freedom". At their worst, they're socialism in action: distribution of the evil throughout society. Without juries, only the elite get to break the law. If a jury lets a guilty guy go, hey ... now
everybody gets a shot at getting away with it. Look at it this way: you can't make crime go away, and it is unacceptable to jail or execute an innocent. Since protecting the people requires that some get away with it (truism) why not distribute that right to get away with it equally?
And a jury of one's peers is essential, as well. Anyone who was ever punished as a kid for something they didn't do knows exactly what happens if the jury doesn't understand you.
If you have a good lawyer, though, and a Seattle judge named Chan, you can get away with a lot of things if you forego your jury trial. I watched a lawyer on trial for crimes not pertaining to his practice waive his jury trial once. It was a smart move. His attorney was a local ambulance chaser, a hair splitter. And with a legalistic mind on the bench, one suddenly earns an acquittal on a rape charge because the victim didn't scream loudly enough.
You think a jury would have let him get away with that? In the end, it was a brilliantly cruel defense. Of course, paying a man $200 an hour to slander your own daughter in order to save your own ass is exactly why you don't want a jury listening to you.
It works both ways. You have a
right to a jury trial. When a defense attorney waives the jury trial, it means there's trouble in the defense and counsel will rely on hair-splitting to get from point A to point J without ever touching on the points between.
And remember: What Congress did to President Clinton was, technically, illegal. They did it because they knew a jury wouldn't stand for the things they had to do to nail him.
Or there's the
Apprendi case, in which a judge
finally overturned a method of compounding convictions so that the jury can convict you of a crime they didn't know you were charged with and which you're not allowed to defend yourself against. (Apprendi was a case related to a hate-crime, but will also have much impact on compulsory distribution charges in the drug war.)
We need juries. And we need them of our peers. It seems to me that when people try to go around juries, it's because they have something to hide. And that seems significant, if it's a reasonably accurate reflection of reality.
But it comes down to two rights: right to trial by jury, and right to equal protection under the law. Professional juries will not meet those standards.
thanx much,
Tiassa