Jury Reform

Going off the idea from Unter, I think a good idea would be to reform the system of jury selection by pre-selecting fifteen members of the RA at the beginning of each term. When a new case goes through, the pre-selected fifteen would then be randomized again to the chosen five. I'm also open to limiting the amount of jurors to only three but only if support swells.

TNP Law

Jury Reform

Section 1
a) At the beginning of each election, the Chief Judicial officer must pre-select fifteen members of the Region Assembly through the randomized process of jury selection as stated before, to be prepared for jury duty if a case is brought forth.
b) When a case is brought forth, the list of fifteen jurors will then be randomized again, for the sole purpose of serving as jurors for the court.
c) No juror may be forced into jury duty.
d) Should a pre-selected juror not be able to serve, additional add ons from the most recent list of Regional Assembly members will be accepted.

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Also open to kicking out RA members who were pre-selected but change their minds at the last minute, barring clear bias and all the other fathomable reasons for not being up to the task.

The real problem here is the failure to follow the procedures for jury selection already written out.
First problem that needs to be addressed is the need to have the RA roster checked on a timely and periiodic manner. Whether that needs to amend current law, or authorizing other officers to conduct the check in addition to the MIIA, is also a possibility.
One other possibility is to use jurors only in the grand jury role for all criminal proceedings, select the grand jury pool, and allow a quorum of grand jurors to approve indictments. (Similar to how the SC works in approving its actions.) Then, with the addition of one more associate justice, we could go to a system where all trials are before one justice of the Court in rotation, and the other three justices would constitute the appellate panel of the Court for that particular case.

There may be other variations as well.......and I strongly feel we need to address the issue of making sure the the membership roster is regularly and periodically checked.

Grosseschnauzer:

The real problem here is the failure to follow the procedures for jury selection already written out.
First problem that needs to be addressed is the need to have the RA roster checked on a timely and periiodic manner. Whether that needs to amend current law, or authorizing other officers to conduct the check in addition to the MIIA, is also a possibility.
One other possibility is to use jurors only in the grand jury role for all criminal proceedings, select the grand jury pool, and allow a quorum of grand jurors to approve indictments. (Similar to how the SC works in approving its actions.) Then, with the addition of one more associate justice, we could go to a system where all trials are before one justice of the Court in rotation, and the other three justices would constitute the appellate panel of the Court for that particular case.

There may be other variations as well.......and I strongly feel we need to address the issue of making sure the the membership roster is regularly and periodically checked.

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I agree with you but quite frankly, we can't force ministers to do it when it isn't exactly compulsory or involving a messy impeachment process where the lack of proper jury formation will ironically be a hindrance.

With this, we can at least have fifteen members on notice for any scenario and the ability to impeach given gross negligence (which has not yet been seen, depending on who you ask.)

It's been argued that the RA as a whole shouldn't serve as a jury (or appeals court) because of the importance of separating the legislative and judicial branch, and a fear of its biases affecting outcomes.

Yet the only way you can become a jury member is to be a RA member.

How exactly does a subset of the RA create a separation between the legislative and judicial branches and eliminate the larger body's (supposed) inherent bias?

Blackshear:

It's been argued that the RA as a whole shouldn't serve as a jury (or appeals court) because of the importance of separating the legislative and judicial branch, and a fear of its biases affecting outcomes.

Yet the only way you can become a jury member is to be a RA member.

How exactly does a subset of the RA create a separation between the legislative and judicial branches and eliminate the larger body's (supposed) inherent bias?

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Bias is a matter for the judges to handle when selecting jurors. All this does is give advanced warning to fifteen members that they may, if a case if brought forth, be chosen to be one of five jurors when a trial is called. The fifteen will be released from their duty every election cycle and should this list be exhausted then standard procedure is still in effect, only this time we'll be 4 out of 5 jurors closer.

I think this is a fair idea, but first let me repost my thoughts in the other thread, which I still like:

I can't see anywhere in the Constitution itself where it states how juries need to be chosen. I've never been called for jury duty myself IRL but I believe they summon more people than the actual size of the jury.

Could another solution to this be to send summons to, say, 15 random RA members, and then take whoever replies in 3 days. Then the defense and prosecution could take turns pinging potential jurors until it gets down to 5 actual jurors. I think the defense should go first.

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The difference between the methods is that in one jurors are given advance warning (which I don't think they'll alter their lives for) and one is essentially the current system, but instead of taking 3 rounds to get a jury of 5, we combine those rounds into one.

Here's a question which probably won't be a problem but should be thought about for a minute anyway: will the public at large know who the 15 pre-selected jurors are? If by chance there's seen to be a bias in a significant bloc of jurors, it might prompt cases being brought against someone on the wrong side of that bias.

Unterwasserseestaat:

I think this is a fair idea, but first let me repost my thoughts in the other thread, which I still like:

I can't see anywhere in the Constitution itself where it states how juries need to be chosen. I've never been called for jury duty myself IRL but I believe they summon more people than the actual size of the jury.

Could another solution to this be to send summons to, say, 15 random RA members, and then take whoever replies in 3 days. Then the defense and prosecution could take turns pinging potential jurors until it gets down to 5 actual jurors. I think the defense should go first.

Click to expand...

The difference between the methods is that in one jurors are given advance warning (which I don't think they'll alter their lives for) and one is essentially the current system, but instead of taking 3 rounds to get a jury of 5, we combine those rounds into one.

Here's a question which probably won't be a problem but should be thought about for a minute anyway: will the public at large know who the 15 pre-selected jurors are? If by chance there's seen to be a bias in a significant bloc of jurors, it might prompt cases being brought against someone on the wrong side of that bias.

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Absolutely not, for the same reason why jury selection is an open process. Especially in this case, it leaves jurors open to lobbying and we've seen how that works regardless of which country we live in. The fifteen selected will remain a secret to all but the judges until the final five are chosen and even then gag orders are in place.

I'm not sure but Interim Court Rules should say something about jury intimidation, some help from the judiciary would be helpful. And if not then I'll add it onto this bill at first glance.

Just to float an interesting idea - why not select a group of jurors from a number that volunteer (from the RA roles) each term?

We're going on about how long it takes to set up a jury, how it could be biased through the changes proposed, so forth... has anyone considered that maybe we should dump not the jury, but the grand jury instead?

According to Wikipedia, the United States is the only RL country that still uses grand juries, and apparently not all of the US even uses them. Probably for the same reason we're looking to shorten our judicial process - it's too much of a hassle looking for people to serve on a jury, and doing so uses up people for an actual trial or "petit" jury. The Justices can serve the purpose of a Grand Jury quite easily - they are elected for their ability to be unbiased, and as such should be able to judge if the evidence presented is indeed enough for a trial. I realize that we only require this for impeachment trials, but then consider this: If a Grand Jury had not been required for FEC's impeachment trial, the jury for Fulhead's trial would have been filled much quicker. At least two of the jurors originally selected for Fulhead's trial had been selected for FEC's trial, and thus couldn't serve again.

This way, we get to keep the trial-by-jury right that everyone's so worried about, but we are able to cut down at least some of the hassles involved in the process.

Romanoffia:

Just to float an interesting idea - why not select a group of jurors from a number that volunteer (from the RA roles) each term?

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Having random selection allows better access to unbiased jurors. It'd be the same as having a permanent set positions of jurors.

Hersfold

This is a whole other Constitutional Amendment idea. Wanna write out the language or should I?