Jury Trial Research Paper

In most of the English colonies including the United States, adopted the English common law system, one of these laws is “been trial by a jury” which include the number of members, they play an important role on every trial as they do now. The first one to implement the ”juries” was the king of England Ethelred who has been credited with the formation of local investigations that include twelve members. The King made many provisions to the code of law including a letter with a law code named “Tantage” in 997 this letter is considered to be the beginning of jury’s formation, on this he stated:

“That there shall bean assemble in every meting place and in that assembly shall go forth the twelve eldest thegns and the reeve along with them, and

Following the sixth amendment, the Supreme Court in the case Thompson vs. Utah in 1898 stated: “the jury referred to in the original constitutional and six amendment is a jury constituted, as it was at common law, of twelve persons, neither more or

Among the first was the case Beck v. Alabama (447 US 625, 1980) in which the issue was whether a conviction –minded jury must be allowed to consider a verdict of guilty of a lesser –included noncapital offense. Under Alabama death penalty statute, the trial judge was prohibited from giving the jury this option. Instead the jury was given the choice of either convicting the defendant of the capital crime, in which case it was required to impose the death penalty, or acquitting the defendant. (In Alabama, if the defendant is convicted, death penalty is imposed, and so the trial judge must hold a hearing to consider the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. After hearing the evidence, the judge may refuse to impose the death penalty and instead, may sentence the defendant to life without