Opinion ID: 2082795
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Jury's Democratic Function

Text: The right of one accused of a crime to have his or her case presented before a jury enjoys a long and distinguished heritage in Anglo-American law. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Sir William Blackstone wrote: Our law ... wisely placed this strong and two-fold barrier, of presentment and a trial by jury, between the liberties of the people and the prerogative of the crown. It was necessary, for preserving the admirable balance of our constitution, to vest the executive power of the laws in prince and yet this power might be dangerous and destructive to that very constitution, if exerted without check and control, by justices of oyer and terminer occasionally named by the crown ... who might then ... imprison, dispatch or exile any man that was obnoxious to the government, by an instant declaration that such is their will and pleasure. But the founders of English law have contrived that ... the truth of every accusation ... should ... be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbors, indifferently chosen and superior to all suspicion. [3] The first jury was probably empanelled in Delaware in 1669 and juries were an established component of the judicial process by 1675. [4] Since Delaware's first constitution, adopted in the fall of 1776, Delaware has afforded the right to trial by jury in both criminal and civil proceedings. The Declaration of Rights and Fundamental Rules of the Delaware State, guaranteed the right to trial by jury to all citizens and included a statement [t]hat trial by jury of facts where they arise is one of the greatest securities of the lives, liberties and estates of the people. [5] John Dickinson, a lawyer and one of Delaware's delegates to the Philadelphia Convention that drafted the United States Constitution wrote that [t]rial by Jury is our birth-right. In a letter to Pierre S. duPont, Thomas Jefferson described the fact-finding function of jurors as: The very essence of a Republic .... We of the United States ... think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent.... Hence, with us, the people ... being competent to judge of the facts occurring in ordinary life, ... have retained the functions of judges of facts under the name of jurors.... I believe ... that action by the citizens, in person in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives chosen immediately and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a Republic.... [6] The right to a fair trial before an impartial jury of one's peers is fundamental to the American criminal justice system. The United States Supreme Court had held: The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it. Beyond this, the jury trial provisions in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a fundamental decision about the exercise of official power  a reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power, so typical of our State and Federal Governments in other respects, found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence. [7]