I’m on call for jury duty, and while I wouldn’t mind sitting through a trial, this kind of thing never comes at a convenient time. We ought to be able to pick our jury weeks!
Anyway, I thought I’d see how long we’ve been plugged into a jury system. Basically, we know the Athenians around 507 BCE, with their democratic system, did everything by the people. Juries of 500 men (of course) were selected every day to rule on criminal and civil accusations and crimes. Sounds like they had complaining neighbors and teen hoodlums aplenty even back then.
A more modern form of this was developed by Germanic tribes where they chose men of good character to investigate crimes (the beginning of the idea of a grand jury) and judge the accused (petit jury).
The Saxons adopted a similar system by 978 AD. One of Alfred the Great’s Dooms (laws) required that 12 men from every 100 were to accuse perpetrators of crimes and pass judgment on them. So without a police force, juries acted as the law—the perfect occupation for the busybody sorts.
In England, with the Dooms laws to lay the base, the Assize courts were developed. Henry II (1154-1189) demanded twelve "good and lawful men" in each village to assemble and reveal the names of those suspected of crimes. At this point, petit juries divided into two types we have today, civil and criminal.
In 1215 the Magna Carta, building on the prior years of jury development, expressly included the right of every free man to protection from punishment without "the lawful judgment of his peers." (And 700 years later, the Ku Klux Klan still didn’t grasp that concept.)
At the same time, the Catholic Church removed its sanction from all forms of ordeal. Previously, instead of using a petit jury, people accused of crimes could be tested for guilt. We’ve all heard of dunking witches to see if they drowned, at which point they were concluded innocent, not to mention quite dead. But suspected thieves could have molten metal poured into their hand under the assumption that if the wound healed rapidly and well, God found the suspect innocent. Without a trial by ordeal, they had to come up with a better way of establishing guilt. They already had juries that would indict criminals. Now they needed jurors to decide if the accused were guilty as charged—I’m sure dunking was a lot more entertaining than sitting around deciding if Old Bob or Young Mary was the liar.
Henry III’s reign regularized the basic trial by petit jury with which we’re familiar—with witnesses and others with knowledge of the case. But it wasn’t until Henry VI’s reign that evidence was introduced into trials.
By the 1700s, the framers of the United States Constitution believed that a trial by an impartial jury was among the principle rights of any free society. The two components of the U.S. jury system — randomness and compulsory service — were developed to ensure that a jury is a representative sample of the community regardless of race, gender, political affiliation or ability to weasel out of jury duty.
Which means I have to call in every night this week and pray I won’t get stuck with a trial that will run over into the vacation to the Grand Canyon that we’ve been planning for the last year!