Jury decision making

Abstract

The idea of a jury of 12 (it is 15 in Scotland) has been an essential feature of English common law and was passed on to the Anglo-Saxons by the Vikings. Unanimous verdicts were introduced in 1367 and abolished in 1978. Unanimity of jury verdicts was reiterated by the US Supreme Court in Patton v. United States 1930] 231 US 276, as a basic requirement of the American jury. However, four decades later, the decision in Johnson v. Louisiana 1972] 32 L.Ed.2d 152 introduced majority verdicts in non-capital felony cases and in Burch v. Louisiana 1979] 441 US 130 it was stated that six-person juries must be unanimous. Regarding jury eligibility, there have always been qualifications required of every man to serve on a jury: originally, the requirement was to be a freeholder, but it became a householder in the 19th century. In England, the Juries Act (1974) changed the qualification for jury service to eligibility to vote at an election of a Member of Parliament, thus making possible 'jury vetting' of persons with a criminal record. The 1970s saw an unprecedented onslaught on the jury in the UK and a number of serious restrictions were imposed (see below), resulting in the proportion of criminal cases tried by jury being drastically reduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)