A jury is a group of twelve people that are over eighteen who determine if the accused is guilty at the end of a criminal trial. (fedcourt, 2023) If chosen from the electoral roll for jury duty, the person must attend unless they have a criminal record, a part of the legal system, have health reasons or served jury duty in the past twelve months. (Courts Administration Authority, 2023)
The jury system requires reform to avoid a repeat of the Chamberlain case as complex information can be too hard to understand and the accountability of jurors is not high when making their verdict. However, this may not be the case as jurors can be more sympathetic than judges and having twelve people decide on a verdict is better than one person.
In a trial, some of the information presented can be found too hard for jurors to understand. If the information is too complex for the jurors to understand, the jury's verdict may find the wrong party guilty and punish an innocent person. In the 2021-2022 financial year, 97% of judgements resulted in a guilty outcome. (Australian Bureau of statistics, 2023) Some of these cases most likely resulted in a guilty outcome as the jurors
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Jurors can be good to have on a criminal trial as they are more sympathetic when making their verdict. It is recognised that judges can be out of touch with regular society as they are seen to have grown up with more money than the regular society. (Sydney criminal lawyers, 2014) This means that people have a misconception that Judges have not grown up with normal human experiences so they don’t feel as sympathetic. It is also mentioned that Judges only make their decision based on the legal aspects of the case and do not take anything else into account. A jury that is made up of normal everyday people is seen to have experienced everyday human experiences therefore will recognise a human factor into account when making their