OUGHT TRIAL BY JURY TO BE ABOLISHED.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVI, Issue 994, 28 November 1883, Page 5

OUGHT TRIAL BY JURY TO BE ABOLISHED.

The main arguments against the jury system seem to be four in number, the first and second being the incapacity and partiality of the jurors ; and the third and fourth being the cumbersomeness and expense of the system. As regards the first point, it may be admitted that special juries are, as a rule, composed of fairly intelligent men ; but since nine-tenths of our civil and criminal cases are disposed of by common juries, I have a right to claim that by common juries the system must stand or fall. And is it. not well known that common juries rarely comprise the most educated and intelligent men on the list, but rather those who may be depended upon by the summoning officer, and who have not found some method of earning that officer's special favour ? Is not this particularly the case in the country, and in the suburbs of large towns, where clerks and others, whose avocation compels them to travel too and fro, rarely get called upon to serve, while the local " butcher and baker and candlestickmaker " are continualh 7 finding themselveß on the panel ? On this point a legal paper has said : "In no other concern of life are important issues committed to persons who possess no special qualifications whatever for the duties thus assigned to them. For medicine we go to the physician, and for legal advice to the lawyer ; yet for justice we go to twelve men, not one of whom may have been in a court before, or have had any experience of the arts of debate, the subtleties of counsel, or the difficulty o£ weighing the doubtful evidence or opposite witnesses." And another authority put the case in a stronger light still, in declaring, "Our jurymen quit their shops for the court of justice ; they march from the weighing of candles to the weighing of testimony — from the measuring of tape to the measuring of fate — from dealing in bacon^and cheese to dealing with the lives, properties and liberties of men. And when we think of the absurd verdicts jurymen often return when we hear revelations as to how damages have been assessed on a principle average, and how a man has been adjudged guilty or not guilty according to which side of a coin falls down uppermost, can we say that this condemnation is too severe ?" — From the debate in the " Family Parliament," in " Casell's Magazine."