Opinion surveys regularly show that most Americans trust juries to protect them from unfair acts more than lawyers, judges, Congress or the Supreme Court. The rest are dismissed, settled or end in a plea agreement. When people do demand a trial, they overwhelmingly prefer to face a jury rather than a judge. Currently, civil and criminal juries decide nine of 10 trials in the United States. The growing effort to limit juries irritates some judges.
Some former jurors are unhappy, too.
He recently spent five days listening to evidence in a medical malpractice case and two more deliberating, only to have a judge overrule him and his colleagues. But the judge told us we couldn't do it, that we must not have understood the evidence or his instructions. Well, we understood. The judge just didn't like our answer. A JURY Juries decide only a tiny fraction of all civil and criminal cases.