WHY DON’T WE GET RID OF “DUMBASSED JURORS”?

WHY DON’T WE GET RID OF “DUMBASSED JURORS”?

I received this Email from someone whose address was: bob bdifalco@yahoo.com about my post regarding jury selection. He said:

“Lawyers ought to spend their time getting rid of all juries, and hyping up judges so are adequate without dumbassd jurors.”

JUDGE< When the constitution of this country was being debated jury trial was seen as an essential and far reaching civil right. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution provided for three separate provisions in the U.S. Constitution to guarantee the right of jury trial. Article III, Sec 2 provides for trial of jury in the state where the crime was committed. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public jury trial. The Seventh Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees jury trials in civil cases. The right to jury trial in civil cases was specifically and deliberately added to our Bill of Rights as an essential right of all Americans.
There is a reason for the founding father’s concern about the right of jury trial. From the time of the Norman Conquest the issue of the right the ordinary citizen to trial by one’s peers rather than a judge was a huge issue. The founding fathers knew the history of England. They knew one of the key concessions to the people was the Magna Charta of 1215 conceding the right to a jury trial of one’s peers. They knew the history of the English Star Chamber secret trials by judges and its abolition as a grant of right in 1641.

Alexander Hamilton said: The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.” Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Thomas Paine wrote:
“I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

That’s why Jury trials were seen as such an essential protected right that it was put in the United States Constitution in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments of the US Constitution. When we are dealing with historical rights and constitutional rights of this magnitude which have been included in the Bill of Rights, one should be slow to arbitrarily decide to just eliminate them because of complaints about jury verdicts.

One thought on “WHY DON’T WE GET RID OF “DUMBASSED JURORS”?

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