U.S Jury System: Inconsistent and Outdated Jury duty is a citizen's way to show their power over the government, along with their voting rights, and recently in the United States this power has seemed to shift without much of any acknowledgement. Considering the way the jury system is today, many court hearings have been judged unfairly. Jury selection now results in uninformed people making a decision that may end up being the wrong decision. Sometimes in a life or death situation in court, the jury might be wanting to spare a life when the judge wants to give the death penalty. This issue has been the same for some time, which makes it outdated, and has honestly only changed for the worse. With the uninformed and biased juries that we have …show more content…
Just about every juror is biased for police officers in these court cases the last ten years, but just because they are police officers does not give them the right to be innocent of unnecessary violence. The solution to this issue may sound easy, but clearly has not been for 99 percent of juries in the last ten years. That is not assuming that all juries made the wrong decision, but it is very likely that the majority of these jurors were biased. Jurors that face these cases need to set aside all biased opinions and respect, and truly look into the cases at hand to come up with a final, well thought out decision. The fact that citizens have jury duty is a simple check on the judicial branch, and gives citizens the feeling of power and control. That being said, only citizens should be given the ability to serve. A recent bill was passed that allows noncitizens to serve on juries. This caused some outrage, and people started calling jury duty, “jury service”, because they no longer felt like jury duty had the same meaning and effect. Although this response seems childish and unnecessary, it makes sense. The Los Angeles Times described this argument perfectly in this …show more content…
Jury System needs an upgrade, with some fixes here, and improvements there. With the way it is now, it may seem like we are in control, but in reality we do not have very much power. There is a very specific selection process, that takes out the informed and knowledgeable citizens that Americans need in the jury. The jury will function and work with the way it is now, but having uneducated, and biased jury members will increase the chance of the judge receiving a not so confident decision. If this continues, then more innocent people may end up in prison, more and guilty people may end up back on the streets, which is what U.S. citizens want to avoid. Biased members will also continue to favor police officers,in law enforcement involved cases. In order to be fair and to give citizens full control, other than having educated jurors, is the removal of the override law. This is an unfair law that completely defeats the purpose of jury duty, which leads to this final statement. Jury duty may get some bad reputation, but overall it is an excellent opportunity to not only remind the government, but also oneself, that citizens have control over some of the government along with every citizen’s right to vote. Jury duty is not a form of service, jury duty is a way to show that citizens have