What is a jury Trial A jury trial is when someone has been charged with criminal offenses but they also have that constitutional right to a trial by jury as well. The defendant also has the right to elect a bench trial and what this means is that the trial in which the judge decides the verdict so therefore the defendant can elect to have a jury tri.
It promotes not only a healthy criminal justice system but also a healthy society, where political leaders cannot abuse criminal justice system to silence their opponents. However the use of juries in the criminal justice system may have many problems. Firstly most jurors have little or no training in matters of law. The only legal requirement for a juror is that he knows the facts involved in case being tried. The judge guides the juries in determining the facts they can admit into evidence and the ones they must exclude.
What is a jury? A jury is group of persons summoned and sworn to decide on facts at issue (Meinhold and Neubauer). The Jury system is made mandatory by law, which calls on citizens to decide on disagreements, and matters in court. The jury is in fact one of the most important and critical aspects of the American legal system. All citizens are given the right to a fair jury trial, because the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
When Australia enters into an international agreement, domestic law is modified by statute to embody principles of the agreement. Laws are not fixed, they can be removed by a later act of parliament/changed through legislation reform. Some of the most important human rights legislation include the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) and the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) Common law and statute law promote and enforce human rights in Australia through common law, precedent on international law (Bangalore principle 1988) and the fact it can be overruled by statute law, and through statute law where the executive power signs and ratifies treaty and parliament make all/some of it
These laws are enacted by governments with the process of criminalisation, where certain types of deviant behaviour are made unlawful. The regulation of social conflict through the action & sanctions of the state is the most obvious form of social control. The states role is as an agent of the form of social control is closely connected to the concepts of authority & legitimacy. In the first few centuries in places like Australia, the criminal justice system served two purposes. The first is instrumental, the state responds to crime to secure benifits of the wider society such as crime prevention & crime reduction.
Australia is known for upholding human rights as well as making sure everyone has a fair and equal trial. Indonesia needs to put a cap on the corruption in there country as unfair trials occur quite frequently. Australia has upheld everyone’s human rights in the court of law everyone is equal and the trials are dependant on evidence that has been obtained. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The severity of the crime will determine which court the trial will be held.
The reason is that for a person who is indeed guilty of the crime and who thinks that he cannot escape conviction because of overwhelming evidence, admitting to a lesser crime with lesser penalties will be the best scenario for him. He gets the benefit of immediate disposition of his case since he no longer needs to hire lawyers to defend him in court. While it is true that existing laws mandate that an accused should be defended by a public attorney in case he does not have a lawyer, the practical reality is that only paid lawyers can competently and adequately defend the accused and that public attorneys do not defend their client’s case to the best of their ability. Moreover, the accused also gets the benefit of lesser time in prison as it is implicit in the arrangement that if he agrees to a lesser crime charged he shall be convicted to a lesser penalty. If he behaves properly in prison his sentence may be further reduced for good behavior and he may find himself out of
Abe Haskins Jury Nullification Paper CJA/344 Cultural Diversity in Criminal Justice June 25, 201208 Jury Nullification Jury nullification was first practiced in 1735, and since then, it has become an important element to our criminal justice system. According to Legal-dictionary, “Jury nullification is a jury’s decision to acquit a defendant despite explicitly violating the law because the jury felt that the law was unjust or not applicable to the case.” Whenever there is a jury nullification, unfortunately race and ethnicity are equated in the decision as well as all the other elements that categorize a guilty or not guilty verdict. Racial-based jury notifications have become a problem for our criminal justice system. A jury is used in a trial case to give fair treatment to the defendant whether he or she is guilty or innocent of the alleged crime. Whether the defendant is white, black, red, or green, the color of the defendant’s skin should not be a factor when deciding a case.
Due Process Mary A. Schutta CJA/224 April 16, 2012 Sylvia Beaver Due Process Due process is procedures that guarantee the individual rights of offenders in criminal prosecution. The procedures and rules are fundamental for fair and orderly legal proceedings. The fifth and 14th amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right of the accused to know what the charges are against him or her. Due process also allows this to be heard by a court that has jurisdiction over the issue. Due process makes sure that fairness is part of the process, and it also makes sure the individual receives fair and preventable arbitrary actions from the government.
Brittney Pope Kyle Evans Intro to Criminal Justice 29 November 2012 All about Juries Have you ever wondered what the purpose of a jury is and where it all started at? Well the idea of jurors started back in England as early as the year 1066. These jurors started off as neighborhood witnesses who passed judgment only on the basis of their morals. According to Justice Byron White, “a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the over-zealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps over conditioned or biased response of a judge. Juries were started to establish some justification for the people as stated in the constitution,”