Recorded Oral Presentation Assignment Sample

Part 1: Recorded Oral Presentation

Introduction

• The jury has traditionally played a significant role in the process of the societal idea of justice as the judge of his or her peers.
• However, issues such as efficiency, equity and robustness of the system have recently raised questions that call for the elimination of the system.
• Some see problems with bias, media coverage, or the jury’s lack of knowledge of the law, which leads to inconsistent verdicts.

Some argue for jury trials in the belief that this is a key democratic institution which will maintain the people’s trust in the legal process. The rationale for advocating for the abolition of trial by jury will be analysed alongside its drawbacks. Then, the discussion will discuss why the best approach should be reforming the system rather than eliminating it.

Arguments in Favour of Abolishing Trial by Jury

• The most compelling opposing argument for using a jury trial is that jurors are not legally trained. Jurors do not have a legal background, so they cannot analyse and comprehend the details of evidence, especially in fraud and financial crime cases.
• In R v Twomey & Others [2009], the Court of Appeal believed that a judge-only trial was called for because there was apprehension that the jurors would be approached.
• In this case, some scenarios might be more effective in the hands of legal minds and not the jurors.

One of the reasons is that jurors bring prejudices, stereotypes, and media images and scripts into the jurors’ room, most acutely in sensational trials. West [1996], the Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction of Rosemary West was affected by media prejudice. As a result, we had extensive media coverage, which created a hostile atmosphere in the jury and put the question of whether the jury could be impartial. The analysis presented in this case illustrates how reasoning about media exposure may affect the jury’s decisions and result in unfair trials.

Jurors' trials are far costlier and more prolonged than judge-only trials since they require a significant amount of time and money to select a jury to make the decision. Expenditure, choice of jurors, and protracted deliberation exert a cost implication on the legal structures. The well-known trial of the two Kray twins that took several weeks before the jury, with an extensive presentation of the legal perspective and coverage by mass media, was worth an expensive lawsuit for the justice system. Furthermore, when there is a hung jury or a mistrial, the case goes for a costly retrial that prolongs justice for the victims and the accused.

Arguments Against Abolishing Trial by Jury

• Despite these shortcomings, the trial by jury remains one of England and Wales's most significant assets of justice.
• It promotes democracy, tramples state sovereignty and increases people’s confidence in the law.
• Another unique advantage of the jury system is the public involvement and the immunity of democracy.

Criminal trials by jury allow the public to participate in the legal process rather than leaving the decision to the officials from the profession. Thus, the jurors freed William Penn in Bushell’s Case (1670) against the pressure from the judiciary. After the judge tried to discipline them, the court stated that jurors cannot be dictated on how they come up with their verdicts. This case set a precedent for the jury to be independent, providing justice to the citizens by the citizens.

The fourth crucial reason is that jurors protect against the biases of judges and government excessiveness. Suppose all cases are to be determined only by a judge. In that case, there are issues to do with authoritarianism and bias, which may be a result of ‘capture’ by interests groups in the case of R v Wang (2005), The House of Lords said that in the case of a trial judge must not frame a direction meaning guilty. This case also emphasizes the significance of juries as the triers of fact, thus precluding concentration on a single judge as the maker of those decisions.

• In the same way, juries make the legal system moral and ethical by undertaking jury nullification decision-making whereby a judge or jury may acquit someone even if the law evidences convincingly that the accused is guilty.
• The case of R v Ponting (1985) involved Clive Ponting, a civil servant charged with a breach of the Official Secrets Act, mainly for supplying documents on the Falklands War.
• While the law looked pretty blunt to anyone, the jury exonerated him because it was in the public’s best interest.

This case portrays how juries make sure that justice is done and that it is not predetermined blindly. In addition, it focuses on the following extended ethical significance. This system highly relies on the jury to maintain the population’s trust in the administration of justice. The public is likely to accept legal decisions if they think those have been made by fellow members of society and not by an enlightened bench. In the case of R v Connor & Rollock (2004), an appeal was made, with the view that a juror felt pressured to convict.

A Possible Middle Ground: Reform Instead of Abolition

• Despite the imperfections of the jury system in England and Wales, its complete eradication means eradicating one of the fundamental elements of democratic justice[11].
• Thus, instead of eliminating jury trials, it may be more efficient to introduce specific changes that would fix the main drawbacks of this system while maintaining its advantages[12].
• The following is considered one of the most significant problems: There is not enough professional legal knowledge in jurors, which can be necessary in some specific cases, such as fraud trials[13].

Instead of obliterating juries, using specialized juries for some cases makes sense. Other examples include areas in which jurors would have some professional or educational interest, such as using jurors with financial crime backgrounds in financial-related cases or their legal background when the case involved lots of legal terminology. This approach has been considered in situations such as R v Twomey (2009), in which the nature of the trial and the probability of jury contamination warranted a judge-alone trial. Appointing specialist juries it would reinforce the concept of an ‘impartial jury of one’s peers’ and minimize the chances for confusion in distinctly specialized cases.

Another factor is that of jurors' self-interested bias, mainly when the trial attracts or concerns racially related incidents. Jurors can be tainted by prejudice, which renders them to influence the verdict. As a countermeasure, the obligatory bias-awareness training of jurors might be implemented. It has been hypothesized that if people are informed about their cognitive biases, they can make less biased decisions. It is suggested that good strides towards improving the fairness of jurors’ decisions would be made if the jurors were trained to reflect on and exclude biases based on race and socio-economic status.

Another question that remains for future consideration is the impact of the media coverage on jurors. For instance, in the case of R v West (1996), the Pretrial media coverage made the community extremely hostile, and there were worries that prejudice rather than the facts influenced the jurors. To mitigate this risk, a stronger jury sequestration rule or limited contact with the case materials should be assessed in high-profile cases. This would help to prevent jury prejudices and should mean that jurors make their decisions on facts given in court instead of other influences.

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Conclusion

• The use of a jury, though not without its imperfections, is a legal right that the government has to respect, and its removal is likely to deal a severe blow to public confidence and political activism in the dispensation of justice.
• These concerns made some scholars argue that jury trials should not continue; however, these reasons do not justify doing away with jury trials.
• Civil jury trials remain an essential protection against the government's powers, where the law is not enforced at the judge’s discretion but by ordinary citizens’ opinion.

Other precedents include Bushells Case (1670), R v Wang (2005), and R v Ponting (1985) to show the relevance of continued independence of juries in the present world to ensure that innocent people do not suffer injustice and abuse of individual rights.

Part 2: Annotated Bibliography

Cheryl Thomas, ‘Are Juries Fair?’ (Ministry of Justice Research Series 1/10, 2010).

This paper is one of the most extensive papers on the jury system in England and Wales, and it comprises different cases analyzed about the verdicts made by the jury. The study employs correlational research data from actual trials to determine whether juries epitomize prejudices in their verdict. In his study, Thomas concludes that although juries do reasonably well, there are inconsistency issues, especially when there is racism. This source is essential for evaluating juries' work, highlighting the positive aspects and demerits. The research method is well-grounded and employs statistical data analysis and control experiments.

Roderick Munday, ‘Jury Trial and the Changing Face of Criminal Justice’ [2013] Criminal Law Review 2013(5), 392-406.

In this review, the author scrutinizes issues and concerns related to the jury in the contemporary criminal justice system, including the problems of bias, influence, and misunderstandings of legal questions by jurors. In the next section, the article considers relevant cases such as R v Twomey (2009), where a trial by a judge alone was allowed since there was a potential to influence the jury. Munday opined that jury trials remain a significant, worthwhile feature, but the occasions call for change to plug the numerous gaps and sombre incoherence. His general argument is backed up by researching legal cases and assessing how judicial trends relate to jury trials.

Penny Darbyshire, ‘The Lamp That Shows That Freedom Lives? A Critical Analysis of the Jury’ [1991] Public Law 45(3), 272-289.

This article gives a historical and critical analysis of jury trials; in light of this, the writer raises valid queries about the role of jury trials in justice, let alone its perpetuation of tradition. Darbyshire does grapple with the current romanticism of juries as the remaining bastion of democracy’s gatekeepers, asserting that juries are often arbitrary, expensive and prone to judgments based on passion. The article helps recognize the persisting concerns regarding jury trials and forms the basis for promoting judge trials, evidencing scholarly perspectives. Thus, although the article was written in the early 1990s, it raises many issues that can still be considered paramount today, especially about the multiplexity of contemporary legal practice.

Hannah Quirk, ‘Juries: A Never-Ending Crisis?’ [2018] Modern Law Review 81(5), 789-815.

In his article, Quirk recapitulates the controversies regarding the jury system, emphasising modern-day issues like racial prejudice, media interferences and popular tendencies of having a trial by judge alone in some cases. The paper also cites other current legal cases, such as R v Wang (2005), which tries to protect the independence of the jury. When the jury’s performance is criticised, Quirk identifies how the public continues to trust the jury system, adding that improvement is a more doable option than eradicating the jury system.

Paul Roberts and Mike Redmayne, ‘Criminal Evidence’ (Oxford University Press, 2021).

The author of this book devotes considerable attention to the problem of juries in criminal trials, examining such issues as the admissibility of evidence, bias, and procedural changes. The authors also examine how jury demands for expert evidence and how they reason about weights legal arguments provided, and they look at scenarios where jurors seem to grapple with legal interpretation. The reasons for issuing judicial directions in jury decision-making and the actual trial models are considered, including the use of professional jurors in other countries. The work looks at possible changes that may improve the jury system and not stopping at complete eradication.

References

• R v Twomey & Others (2009) is EWCA Crim 1035
• v Ponting. [1985] Crim. L.R. 318
• BARRY C and others, ‘The Emotional Labour of Judges in Jury Trials’ (2023) 50 Journal of Law and Society 477
• Brown P, ‘Unfitness to Plead in England and Wales: Historical Development and Contemporary Dilemmas’ (2019) 59 Medicine, Science and the Law 187 <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6651607/>
• Custers B, ‘A Fair Trial in Complex Technology Cases: Why Courts and Judges Need a Basic Understanding of Complex Technologies’ (2024) 52 Computer Law & Security Review 105935 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364924000025>
• Cheryl Thomas, ‘Are Juries Fair?’ (Ministry of Justice Research Series 1/10, 2010)
• Eldridge H, ‘Juror Comprehension of Forensic Expert Testimony: A Literature Review and Gap Analysis’ (2019) 1 Forensic Science International: Synergy 24
• Miller MK and others, ‘Trust in the Jury System: A Comparison of Australian and U.S. Samples’ (2021) 28 Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 1
• Ross L, ‘The Curious Case of the Jury-Shaped Hole: A Plea for Real Jury Research’ (2023) 27 The International Journal of Evidence & Proof
• Schrever C, Hulbert C and Sourdin T, ‘The Privilege and the Pressure: Judges’ and Magistrates’ Reflections on the Sources and Impacts of Stress in Judicial Work’ [2024] Psychiatry, psychology, and law 1
• Waller N and Sakande N, ‘Majority Jury Verdicts in England and Wales: A Vestige of White Supremacy?’ (2024) 65 Race & Class
• Hannah Quirk, ‘Juries: A Never-Ending Crisis?’ [2018] Modern Law Review 81(5), 789-815.
• [1] Lewis Ross, ‘The Curious Case of the Jury-Shaped Hole: A Plea for Real Jury Research’ (2023) 27 The International Journal of Evidence & Proof.
• [2] COLETTE BARRY and others, ‘The Emotional Labour of Judges in Jury Trials’ (2023) 50 Journal of Law and Society 477.
• [3] R v Twomey & Others (2009) is EWCA Crim 1035
• [4] Heidi Eldridge, ‘Juror Comprehension of Forensic Expert Testimony: A Literature Review and Gap Analysis’ (2019) 1 Forensic Science International: Synergy 24.
• [5] Nisha Waller and Naima Sakande, ‘Majority Jury Verdicts in England and Wales: A Vestige of White Supremacy?’ (2024) 65 Race & Class.
• [6] Hannah Quirk, ‘Juries: A Never-Ending Crisis?’ [2018] Modern Law Review 81(5), 789-815.
• [7] Penelope Brown, ‘Unfitness to Plead in England and Wales: Historical Development and Contemporary Dilemmas’ (2019) 59 Medicine, Science and the Law 187 <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6651607/>.
• [8] Penny Darbyshire, ‘The Lamp That Shows That Freedom Lives? A Critical Analysis of the Jury’ [1991] Public Law 45(3), 272-289.
• [9] R. v Ponting. [1985] Crim. L.R. 318
• [10] Carly Schrever, Carol Hulbert and Tania Sourdin, ‘The Privilege and the Pressure: Judges’ and Magistrates’ Reflections on the Sources and Impacts of Stress in Judicial Work’ [2024] Psychiatry, psychology, and law 1.
• [11] Monica K Miller and others, ‘Trust in the Jury System: A Comparison of Australian and U.S. Samples’ (2021) 28 Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 1.
• [12] Cheryl Thomas, ‘Are Juries Fair?’ (Ministry of Justice Research Series 1/10, 2010)
• [13] Bart Custers, ‘A Fair Trial in Complex Technology Cases: Why Courts and Judges Need a Basic Understanding of Complex Technologies’ (2024) 52 Computer Law & Security Review 105935 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364924000025>.