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Guest column

Jury system has long served Americans well

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column was written as part of the observance of National Law Week.

By STEVE RUSHING
Published May 5, 2005

This year more than 5-million American adults will be called to jury duty in their respective communities. They will be participating in one of the oldest and most treasured democratic traditions of our republic.

Thomas Jefferson described the right to "trial by juries impartially selected as the best of all safeguards of liberty and property," and called the jury system "the only anchor yet imagined by man which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

The theme of Law Week 2005 is "The American Jury: We the People in Action." This theme reminds us that trial by jury is one of the rights American patriots fought and died for in the American Revolution.

In 1787 the first Congress included the right to a trial by jury in the Sixth (criminal trials) and the Seventh (civil trials) Amendments to the Constitution to ensure that future generations would be judged by their peers, their neighbors as representatives of the people not the government.

Despite recent criticism of our citizen jury system surrounding certain high-profile celebrity trials (for example, 0.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, Robert Blake) and even calls for instituting a professional jury system, I am proud of our present citizen juror system and still believe it is the best in the world - a cornerstone of freedom and a bulwark of democracy.

Although I believe the American jury system serves remarkably well as the conscience of the community, there still is room for improvement.

It concerns me that although most Americans are proud of our jury system, many go to great lengths to avoid jury service. (We've all heard the old quip about the wisdom of placing someone's fate in the hands of people who are not even smart enough to get out of jury duty.) But flight from jury duty is a serious threat to the future of our system of justice.

We must take steps to make jury service more rewarding and less of a burden by more fairly compensating jurors for their service, by emphasizing the highly rewarding experience of this civic privilege, and by acknowledging the unique, democratic power that American jurors wield.

Additionally, although trials that last for months often receive a great deal of publicity, they are extremely rare. However, any inconvenience to prospective jurors must be kept to a minimum.

One way is to encourage more jurisdictions to adopt the "one day/one trial" concept where prospective jurors who are not chosen for a trial on the day they report do not have to come back until they are summoned again, which is usually not for several years.

I believe many of the criticisms can be addressed by improving the quality of the information jurors receive, such as by making the jury instructions clearer and allowing jurors to take notes and question witnesses.

I also believe that the legal profession needs to continue to emphasize the importance of ethics and professionalism. We also should reassess the growing practice of using jury consultants and scientific experts who manipulate the jury selection process by attempting to select jurors predisposed toward a certain verdict, while filtering out intelligent and informed potential jurors during voir dire, or jury selection.

As an attorney, I have stood before more than 200 juries, and before taking an early retirement from the bench as a Pinellas County judge, I presided over more than 200 jury trials. Although not perfect, I am convinced that the American system of citizen jurors has served us extremely well, and with some relatively minor improvements, will continue to serve us well into the future.

Steve Rushing is a Brooksville lawyer. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.

[Last modified May 5, 2005, 01:27:18]