Jury - Role

Role

The role of the jury is seemingly accurate to a finder of fact, while the judge is seen as having the sole responsibility of interpreting the appropriate law and instructing the jury accordingly. The jury will render a verdict on the defendant's guilt, or civil liability. Sometimes a jury will also make specific findings of fact in what is called a "special verdict." A verdict without specific findings of fact that includes only findings of guilt, civil liability and an overall amount of civil damages, if awarded, is called a "general verdict."

Juries are often justified because they leaven the law with community norms. Jury trial verdicts are not, however, legally binding precedents in other cases. For example, it would be possible for one jury to find that particular conduct is negligent, and another jury to find that it is not negligent, without either verdict being legally invalid, on precisely the same factual evidence. Occasionally, if jurors find the law to be invalid or unfair, they may acquit the defendant, regardless of the evidence that the defendant violated the law. This is commonly referred to as "jury nullification of law" or simply jury nullification. When there is no jury ("bench trial"), the judge makes rulings on both questions of law and of fact. In most continental European jurisdictions, the judges have more power in a trial and the role and powers of a jury are often restricted. Actual jury law and trial procedures differ between countries.

The collective knowledge and deliberate nature of juries are also given as reasons in their favor:

Detailed interviews with jurors after they rendered verdicts in trials involving complex expert testimony have demonstrated careful and critical analysis. The interviewed jurors clearly recognized that the experts were selected within an adversary process. They employed sensible techniques to evaluate the experts’ testimony, such as assessing the completeness and consistency of the testimony, comparing it with other evidence at the trial, and evaluating it against their own knowledge and life experience. Moreover, the research shows that in deliberations jurors combine their individual perspectives on the evidence and debate its relative merits before arriving at a verdict.

In the United States, juries are also entitled, when asked to do so by a judge in their jury instructions, to make factual findings on particular aggravating circumstances which will be used to elevate the defendant's sentence, if the defendant is convicted. This practice was required in all death penalty cases in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), where the Supreme Court ruled that allowing judges to make such findings unilaterally violates the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. A similar Sixth-Amendment argument in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) expanded the requirement to all cases, holding that "any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt".

Many U.S. jurisdictions permit the seating of an advisory jury in a civil case in which there is no right to trial by jury to provide non-binding advice to the trial judge, although this procedural tool is rarely used. For example, a judge might seat an advisory jury to guide the judge in awarding non-economic damages in a case where there is no right to a jury trial, such as a personal injury suit brought against a state government.

In Canada, juries are also allowed to make suggestions for sentencing periods and at the time of sentencing, the suggestions of the jury are presented before the judge by the Crown prosecutor(s) before the sentence is handed down. A small number of U.S. jurisdictions, including Texas, give juries the right to set sentences as well as to find guilt or innocence.

However, this is not the practice in most other legal systems based on the English tradition, in which judges retain sole responsibility for deciding sentences according to law. The exception is the award of damages in English law libel cases, although a judge is now obliged to make a recommendation to the jury as to the appropriate amount.

In legal systems based on English tradition, findings of fact by a jury and jury conclusions that could be supported by jury findings of fact when the specific factual basis for the verdict is not known, are entitled to great deference on appeal. In other legal systems, it is generally possible to reconsidered both findings of fact and findings of law made at the trial court level and evidence may be presented to appellate courts in what amounts to a trial de novo of appealled findings of fact made by the court of first instance in a case. The finality of trial court findings of fact in legal systems based on the English tradition has major impact on court procedure in these systems. This finality makes it imperative that lawyers be highly prepared for trial in the first instance in high stakes cases with jury trials based on the English tradition, because errors and misjudgments related to the presentation of evidence at trial to a jury cannot generally be corrected later on appeal. Surprises at trial are much more consequential in jury trials in systems based on the English tradition than they are in other legal systems as a result, so in these systems trial preparation to avoid any possibility of surprise is more important than it might be otherwise.