From: "Ronn Blankenship"
> At 08:32 AM 7/11/01, Robert Shaw wrote:
>
> >I couldn't say if ill-educated juries are a real problem, but if they
> >are it would be better to vet the jurors for competence than to
> >abolish them.
>
>
> Here in the US, it frequently seems that ill-educated jurors are more
> likely to get to hear a case than well-educated ones: when the lawyers
are
> interviewing potential jurors at the start of a trial, each side is
allowed
> to reject a certain number without having to explain why, and many times
as
> soon as they learn that a person is well-educated or has a job that
> suggests that they are well-educated, that juror is dismissed.
Jury selection doesn't work in quite the same way in the UK. Lawyers
have less freedom to reject jurors. However people can ask to be exempted
from jury service, after they've been called up, for various reasons. It's
not intentional, but those exemptions are most easily and most often
claimed by the well educated and wealthy.
> The idea,
> apparently, is that the lawyers don't want educated persons who will think
> for themselves, but rather jurors who are likely to listen to what the
> lawyers say and vote the way they want them to.
>
In complex cases, such as fraud trials, just understanding the evidence
may require many people to exert more mental effort than they have
since they left school. The argument then is that if the jury can't
understand the evidence they are unlikely to be able to make a
satisfactory judgement. Some lawyers claim they don't like the idea
of guilt or innocence being decided by whichever barrister is most
charismatic but would rather have the merits of their case decided
by an impartial, and presumably more competent, judge.
--
Robert
