NCJ Number
101833
Date Published
1985
Length
420 pages
Annotation
Eight free-standing essays present an interpretive history of the English trial jury from its inception to the eve of the Victorian reforms of the criminal code (1200-1800), focusing on jury nullification (jury acquittal of a defendant it believes to be guilty as charged) and its impact over time on substantive law, the administration of the law, and the way in which English society perceived the jury and the law.
Abstract
A review of the institutional setting of the medieval criminal trial jury precedes an empirical analysis of jury behavior in homicide cases. The impact of jury behavior on the evolution of the substantive law in the medieval period is next discussed. Essays dealing with law reform focus on both procedural and substantive changes in the 16th and early 17th centuries regarding the decline of the self-informing jury, the rise of the prosecution, and the development of effective means for controlling the criminal trial jury. The emergence and maturation of the claim that the jury has the right to 'find law' are also considered. Also addressed are (1) the way in which 18th-century English society viewed the jury's role in routine felonies and (2) that century's political and legal struggle surrounding the law of seditious libel, which involved debate over the jury's right to find law as well as fact. Footnotes and indexes of persons, places, and subjects.