The following article will concentrate on the advantages and disadvantages of the jury system in Australia.
First, of foremost, the strength of the jury system is that it representativeness the general folk in the legal which is a responsibility of everyone (qualified and has never been detained) to serve in civic duty as a citizen. Other preferences of the jury system include that it shares the liability rather than the judge deciding the case solely. On one hand, it is substantially complicated for juries (12 in a criminal case or six in a civil case) to decide especially in a criminal issue because they have to set a verdict unanimously which increases the delay and causes a mass of detriment. On the other hand, means that for 12 people more confidence and ensures that the decision is more potential to be correct in term of legal mischaracterization that might occur during the examining of evidence and being more understandable for people whom they are engages in the jury resolution. Furthermore, jury service is a difficult function for most people because juries occasionally find outrageous either understanding complicated evidence particularly if it is medical, forensic and that involves a financial data. Additionally, due to the solicitors’ prowess and the effect of media, they can impact on them thereby the jurors perhaps ignore the shreds of evidence and merge their sentiment with their judgment rather than award essential on the pieces of evidence.
Moreover, if it is a civil case, jury members may struggle to transact with a variety of evidence particular with a prolonged court or if there is a numeral of witnesses require to hear. Thus, jury members perhaps be unable to cope with that volume of evidence and therefore unable to grant a fair outcome to the case. It is worth pointing that one of the strongest objections raised against the jury system was by McCusker, who is a preeminent Western Australian lawyer and now the leader of the state, found it is preposterous to rely on the judgment made by people selected randomly from the community.
Alternatively, his proposal was that is important that the verdict been made only by judges because they have been trained whom to analyze the evidence, assessing the sincerity of the witnesses and more significant they are less to influenced by the media and emotive speech of lawyers. Another cons of the jury is because juries do not need to justify their decision, there is a possibility do not converse with their peers the reasoning or the approach they used in reaching their decision. According to that, it is formidable to know with the current jury system if followed the law or whether they applied it correctly.
Further to that, a massive increase in cost involved and the delays caused by having to explain legal terms to the jury and selecting the jury attempts might lead to a lengthy trial, as well as when juries deliberate that takes to prolong the time for them to achieve a decision. However, apart from that juries tend to increase costs and delay, they are sustainable for equability and unbiased for hearing to ensure that the judiciary is not misusing.
