Judge & Jury ( Archived) (7)

Given that the case of Zimmerman, which was tried by a jury, seems to have a lot of people up in arms, do you think juries should be random people or people who have some legal training in order to understand the complexities?

Or should trials simply be held in front of judges only?

Regardless of whether a trial is determined by a judge or jurors, any guilt is based on the weight of the evidence here in the USA. There is nothing difficult about that. Now, court procedure and attorney ego and conduct is something that scares most folks that I know, though.

I believe 12 jurors is a fair amount,made up of people of who have attained an average educational standard.
The clerk of the court should be available when they recess to make there decision,to clear up any discepances,mis-understanding,and keep them within the law.

Folks. You can dream on, but the US has no intention of modifying our Constitution for the whims of non-Americans. Our Constitution says, the accused shall be tried by a Jury of his peers. You wish to filter that so only those with legal training qualify, well those are not peers unless the accused is a lawyer. While there were appeals in our history based on the exclusion or admission of non-whites, whites, high school drop outs, college graduates, and females from trials where there were guilty verdicts for someone who argued that jury person is not a peer the passage of the Civil Rights Act and later the EEO Act put a lot of those appeals to rest. The Supreme Ct. ruled. You can't use race or gender or education as the discriminator. I am aware there was a challenge based on the increasingly popular exclusion of convicted felons from jury pools (probably resulting from a person with multiple convictions arguing all the people who judged him should have been just like him), but I do not know if that old case appeal is still alive or not.

Anyway, the key word is peers. Those wishing to get out of jury duty can usually do so by simply telling the judge you believe any person accused must be guilty or they wouldn't be there. The judges usually tell you to leave the courtroom at that point and pick someone else.