A Study On Jury Trial: A Mechanism And Practical Results Perspective

This dissertation is titled "Study on Jury Trial: A Mechanism and Practical Results Perspective".Besides Introduction and Conclusion, there are 6 chapters in this dissertation, total 140 thousand Chinese words. The subject and outline of each chapter are as follows:Chapter One is titled "Summary of Jury Trial System". In the first section, some relative definitions of jury trial system are discussed. In the second section, the author explores the origin and the evolution of jury trial.In the beginning, the inquest was used mainly in administrative inquiries. Later with Henry II's innovations, the jury was gradually enjoined to inquire into the legal area, especially in all crimes. The evolution of the jury's judicial functions was analyzed in the third section. In England, the petti jury played an active role at first, because they can investigate by themselves, summon the witnesses to court and ask questions in court, later these rights were gradually deprived of, thus the jury became passive. In the fourth section, the succession and development of the jury trial system in the USA is observed. As was in England, at first the jury played a more active role than it does today. On the whole, we believe that the derivation of the jury trial system was not because of the requirement of the democratic ideal. At first, the jury was only the tool of monarchy. When it gradually became judicator, the jury developed into bulwark which was against the dictatorship of the monarchy and protected the people's rights and interests.Chapter Two is titled "Jury Trial and the Adversarial Procedure". In the first section, the author mainly discusses the characteristics of jury trial and discloses its influences on the medieval English criminal procedure. The next two sections are about the relations between jury trial and adversarial court trial, the rules of evidence. The development of the adversarial procedure is closely related to the jury trial which caused the separation of judicial power in court. The requirement of a public trial by a jury and the minor role of the trial judge saved English procedure from degenerating into an inquestorial system. There exists certain relation between the mechanism of the jury trial and the sophisticated rules of evidence. The fourth section is about the contribution of the jury trial system to the modern Anglo-American legal system and democracy.Chapter Three and Four concern the jury decision-making process and the relative psychological elements. Chapter Three is titled "Jury Decision-Making and the Psychological Elements". The author analyzes the psychological elements of the individual juror and the jury group from the cognitive psychology and information communicating perspectives. The elements referring to the individual juror include characteristics, attitudes, values and cognitions; while the elements referring to the jury group include deliberation content, style, participation, majority and polarization effects, leniency effect, and so on. Chapter Four is titled "Narrative-Story Model and Jury Decision-Making". We believe that constructing stories is the focus of the disicion-making process after exploring the jury decision-making based on the theory of narrative-story model.Chapter Five is titled "Jury Trial Innovations". In this chapter, the author first summarizes the mistaken impressions of juries and the suggestions of improving this system, hence some suggestions are put forward on the basis of the analysis and exploration in the preceding chapters. The judge's role(including the judge and the jury) should be properly expanded to seek trial justice, it should be more than a passive referee. Conversely, attorney powers should be curtailed.Chapter Six is titled "Analysis on the Feasibility of the Jury Trial in China". After analyzing, we believe the execution of such system in China is necessary. But at present the ensemble of Anglo-American jury system cannot be transplanted into our legal system, nevertheless, part of its experience can be drawn on. Nowadays many scholars in Anglo-American countries suggest adopting part experience of the Continental mixed court to improve the jury trial. This idea is the mirror of the compromise of these two genealogies of law. As the legal reform goes on in China and the ideology of human rights strengthens, the status of the defendant heightens and the characteristics of the adversarial prosecure in our court increase, Chinese people's assessor system will help improve fact-finding in court and gradually cause to realize the ideology of democracy, justice and freedom.