The American Experiment - Essay Example

The American Experiment al Affiliation The American Experiment Jury verdicts have far-reaching effects on the lives of thousands ofindividuals all over the world including the United States every year. The panel consists of a group of twelve lay people that the authorities choose at random from the general population. The Panels serve many vital and related functions that include increasing the accountability of the judicial systems to the popular will of the people (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006).

They achieve this goal by reducing the isolation that had characterized the judiciary, and also they aid in limiting arbitrary government actions. Jurists make their deliberations under the cloak of secrecy hence it is very difficult to make out what happens in their discussion chambers. Legal policymakers have for a long time relied on untested intuitions on juries to make important decisions about both the scope and conduct of jury trials. However, empirical research on the functioning of the jury is gradually replacing this initial reliance on intuition, speculation, and anecdotes.

There is a lot of information on the cognitive processing at trial as well as dynamics of jury deliberations. In their research study, Zeisel and Kalven try to explain why and how members of the jury make their decisions (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006).The authors refer to the whole jury system as an experiment but unfortunately with the conduct of serious human affairs. They describe how the Judiciary picks members of the Jury as one of the factors that make it an experiment. The authors state that the random choice of the Jurists and then the abrupt dismissal at the end of a trial makes it all the more experimental.

They argue that most of the Jurists are not usually well versed with law terminologies and despite the Judge’s warnings; most of them often make their decision way early in the pre-trial phase. Zeisel and Kalven further state that the confidence in the jury system shows that the emotional and social aspects of the Jurists’ human nature were implicit in the formulation of this democratic ideal (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006). According to their research, Jurists use two main phenomena when making their decisions, that is the punished-enough theory and decisions that have race as their basis.

On the punished-enough theory, the authors argue that most Jurists make their decisions basing on their emotions rather than logic and the legal instructions that the Judge reads out to them at the beginning of a trial. They further use actual court records to draw examples of explicit verdicts from actual criminal Jury trials that Jurists conducted in the United States. Zeisel and Kalven highlight the many and ever-shifting aspects of the punished-enough theory to make a verdict. It is well evident from their study that Jurists make their decisions purely on circumstantial evidence without investigating motive or the trigger for a criminal offence.

They cite an example such as when the court presses charges against a man accused of auto homicide where his girlfriend died (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006). Although the man is culpable for murder, the authors observe that the Jurists acquitted him of any wrongdoing because they felt that he had already been punished enough by the circumstances. Racial bias is another factor that the authors present in their study as one of the proofs of the experimental nature of the jury system.

The authors as well support their argument on racial bias using actual Jury trial records on African-Americans and Indians. The Jury often views the two minority group as uncultured people who lack moral sense hence they are more culpable for violent encounters such as shooting and killing on impulse. However, they note that the Jury has a different mindset when it comes to domestic violence verdicts involving the two minority groups. The Jury may make a first-degree murder conviction in a case that only required manslaughter because it involves abuse towards a woman (Murphy, Pritchett, Epstein & Knight, 2006).

References Murphy, W. F., Pritchett, C. H., Epstein, L., & Knight, J. (2006). Courts, judges, and politics: An introduction to the judicial process (6th Ed.). New York McGraw-Hill.