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Pros And Cons Of Juries In Australia

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The relevance of juries in the Australian criminal system given the expansion in modern technology has been questioned regarding the effectiveness of ordinary people judging complex legal issues. The jury system was developed in England between the 12th and 15th century, in a time when courts relied more on the theory of a jury judging its own peers. With complex evidence presented in courts and the advances in technology available to the average citizen, the use of the jury system has been reported to have problems regarding the comprehension and impartiality. There are many pros and cons to the jury system currently in use in our Australian legal system, for the jury system to be able to work coherently with our legal system these pros and …show more content…

There are many criticisms surrounding, the jury system currently in use in our Australian legal system, these criticisms have recently been brought into the light over the past few years with many cases, such as the Casey Anthony case where a mother was acquitted of murdering her daughter as the jury stated, after less than 11 hours of deliberation, ‘there was not enough evidence’ when the forensic evidence was clearly stacked against her. This lack of competence by the jurors is a criticism that Lord Denning argued about in What Next in the Law? (1982) he debates that the selection of jurors is far too wide, resulting in jurors that are not competent to perform their task. Lord Denning suggested that the jury party should be selected in much the same process as magistrates are, with interviews and references required, although this initiative has several obvious problems, a more complicated selection process would be much more time-consuming and costly to the Australian tax payer; finding sufficient people willing to take part would prove incredibly difficult and a jury that is intelligent and educated can still be biased, and may be more likely to be so if drawn from a narrow social group. For a trial by jury case to be effective, no bias should exist in the jurors judgments, the jurors should understand clearly their role and key legal terms, and the jury system should represent the community as a whole and its standards and views whilst upholding the rights of the accused and society and remain cost and time effective. The jury bench should also be filled with a proper representation of the public for a non-biased verdict to be able to be formed (Forum,

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