NCJ Number
85281
Date Published
1981
Length
15 pages
Annotation
The efforts of the Law Reform Commission of Canada in their evaluation of the criminal trial jury in Canada are used to illustrate some of the methodological and other issues facing reseachers who evaluate the functioning of the jury.
Abstract
In 1976, the Law Reform Commission, an advisory body which makes recommendations to the Canadian Parliament regarding legal reform, decided to examine the criminal trial jury. The study aimed to determine whether the use of the jury should be curtailed, maintained, or increased in criminal cases. It also focused on specific practices such as the jury size of 12, the unanimous decision rule, and current jury selection methods. A review of other research on juries revealed that a variety of methodological approaches have been used, including surveys of trial judges, interviews of participants in the jury process, observational studies, and jury simulations. The study group decided to conduct three surveys and three sets of experimental studies. The surveys included a public opinion poll, a survey of actual jurors before and after jury duty, and a survey of Canadian trial judges' views on the jury. The experimental studies focused on the unanimity requirements, judges' instructions to jurors, and people's reactions to verdicts by judges and by juries. Different groups were found to have somewhat different views of the proper functions of the jury. The unanimity requirement was supported by both the public and the experimental research. Further examination of some judges' preferences for majority verdicts rather than for unanimity suggested that their views were based in part on a mistaken impression on the frequency of hung juries. The commission recommended maintaining the unanimity requirement. Twenty-two references are listed.