Jury

The standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is commonly thought to be an important benefit to the accused. The history of the standard is much more complex and demonstrates lesser commitments to the truth and to the defendant.
This article develops the history of the reasonable doubt instruction in the United States and its English antecedents. Examining the development of the instruction in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its evolution through the nineteenth and twentieth, this history reveals the dual nature of the instruction. It both encapsulated a theory of knowledge and articulated a level of confidence in the evidence. Further, the history describes twentieth-century changes in the meaning of the legal standard, particularly the divorce of the jury instruction from a broader theory of knowledge and the failure of the legal language to reflect changing definitions of reason in public discourse. The most significant of these changes in the jury instruction is to define reasonableness as the assignment of reasons. The result of these changes has been both to lower standards of criminal proof and to diminish the autonomy of the juror as the finder of fact. This outcome is the opposite of that believed by the majority of the Supreme Court that made proof beyond a reasonable doubt a constitutional requirement in In re Winship. In particular, these changes in the standard may have altered the operation of the presumption of innocence, so that the defense now has the burden of proving the reasons for innocence. This result has all but escaped scholarly notice, although it is felt keenly by some judges, and it is worthy of both further study and reform.

У  статті  досліджується  інститут  присяжних  з  позиції  соціального
натуралізму,  аналізується  статус  присяжних  та  критерії  їх  відбору
відповідно до новел українського законодавства

Overchuk S. V.
Formation of the Jury institute under the conditions of coming into validity of Criminal-Procedural Code of Ukraine
In the article the Jury Institute is researched from the point of social naturalism, Jury Status is analyzed as well as the criteria of their selection according to the articles of Ukrainian legislation
Key words:
jury, social naturalism, jury institute

The jury is an ancient institution for the protection of an individuals’ liberty against wrongful accusation or punishment by the state. There are functional reasons why a group of laypersons may perform this task, but it is not an absolute assurance of liberty and justice. Among the risks to juror independence are ever more powerful efforts to alter the culture from which jurors come to the legal institution. Even so, its role is considered essential for the protection of liberty in the U.S. criminal justice system. However, the role is in fact in decline as a variety of forms of action are diverted from jury review. This essay considers why such diversions have grown and finds part of the fault in the interests of litigants and officials. The role of the jury is changing, and perhaps only a crisis of liberty may save it.

In belle époque France, criminal juries were criticized as too tolerant of crime and too lenient to effectively punish criminals. While the French institution of the jury was under attack by magistrates and other elites, mixed sex juries provided an alternative model. Jury reformers advocated the introduction of mixed-sex criminal juries in France in order to render better verdicts and reduce crime, especially in the areas of infanticide and abortion. The French National Assembly debates over proposed legislation, however, stalled over political concerns with women's truncated citizenship rights. Historical analysis of the types of arguments deployed in this jury reform debate (including archival documents, parliamentary records, and press sources) reveals that reform proponents argued that gender difference-especially in terms of morality and psychology-justified women's admission to juries, particularly in cases of infanticide and abortion. The operation of an unofficial “...

Product liability and personal injury litigation frequently involves circumstances where an injury or property damage occurred as humans were interacting with products and/or environments while performing some task. Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) professionals are often involved as experts in these cases. The question addressed here is what benefits do juries derive from HFE expert testimony. In this session five panelists with experience as expert witnesses each describe a case that illustrates HFE testimony. Examples of issues addressed are sensory/perceptual limitations, attention capture and capacity, and induced errors. The presentations focus on issues where expert testimony would likely benefit jury understanding technical topics about which jurors may know little about or have misconceptions.