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How does the judge/jury distinction come into play? Is there empirical evidence that trials with juries have more accurate outcomes? I truly know nothing about
by ugh 16y ago
How does the judge/jury distinction come into play? Is there empirical evidence that trials with juries have more accurate outcomes?
I truly know nothing about this but my gut feeling has always been that juries don’t improve trials and I never perceived that as a strange or uncommon view.
- angstrom 16y agoI think the line of thought is that a jury is not as easily bought, harder to threaten, and better at ironing out the moral ambiguities that can be the failings of a single person. However, a judge and no jury is certainly more expedient, neither is infallible in terms of their judgement. That is the reason for appeals.
- pwim 16y agoJudges face bureaucratic pressure to maintain high conviction rates. According to the following paper, it can have negative effects on a Judge's career if he appears to be lenient: http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf
- ovi256 16y agoOnly in a system where judges are elected, like the US. Many, if not most European countries (to discuss the examples I'm familiar with) appoint judges and have had a jury trial system until the beginning of the 20th century. It was abandoned after it was found to be easy to manipulate on a regular basis. Jury trials degenerated into character trials - prosecution would try to discredit the accused, and defense would try to paint him as a pillar of the community. Juries placed too much weight on their personal feeling towards the accused, and too less on what happened and what the evidence was. We like to hope that the US system solved this problem, of course.
- metageek 16y agoI believe only a few US states elect judges; they're usually appointed.
- moomba 16y agoEven if a judge is appointed, there could still be public outrage over the perception of low conviction rates. This would cause another judge to be appointed. The same thing goes on with cabinet positions of all levels of government where the public demonstrates outrage.
- edanm 16y ago"How does the judge/jury distinction come into play? Is there empirical evidence that trials with juries have more accurate outcomes?" Juries may be less accurate and the OP's point still stands - there's a difference. I can easily imagine that juries tend to convict less often. That doesn't mean they're more accurate.
- barrkel 16y agoThe line I've heard is that experienced lawyers would rather be tried by a judge if they were innocent, but a jury if they were guilty.