Professional Jury System

There is an ongoing debate pertaining to the introduction of professional jurors and keeping the current system in place. Those in favor of the implementation of a professional jury system argue that juries should be made up of people with in depth understanding of the laws and new technologies, they say that people bring their bias views into the courtroom and because both the defense and prosecution can dismiss a juror by challenges or cause they are able to stack the selection in their favor, were as professional juror would challenge this process greatly.
Professional jurors may also be more representatives to the defendants peers they non professionals. Those that argue to keep the current system in place say that the short
Lawyers, firefighters, doctors, and nurses present a different demographic that is allowed today.
Another reason for the setup of a professional jury system is that currently juries hear the case and then receive a lesson about the law through jury instructions as one of the last steps, and then have to interpret it and decide. Ellswort, Gusick, Reifman, (1992) pointed out social scientists that have studied jury decisions and came to the conclusion that although jurors might be capable of sorting out the facts, they have a hard time understanding the judge’s instructions and miss critical points. Studies have shown that juror do not understand the law in which they are to decide on (Ellsworth, Gusick, Reifman, 1992 pg 540). In deliberations, Ellsworth (1998) found that jurors spend twenty percent the time discussing the law and only about half of their statements were correct with one fifth being in serious error. Some of the errors were corrected by other juror, however an equal number of corrections were thrown out in favor of
The start of occupational exemptions has dated back to the 1930’s. In
1993 New York took the lead and initiated the Jury Project which included a group of thirty people from judges and attorneys to educators and journalist. They were tasked with three goals: to find jury pools truly representative of the community, a jury system that operates efficiently, and give the ones who serve a positive jury service experience. The Jury Project’s conclusion on occupational exemptions “placed a disproportionate burden on those not exempt by allowing professions to be “free riders” and fostering public discontent with the jury system This sparked change which added one million people to the state of
New York’s jury pool. The elimination of occupational exemptions have not been in New York alone, currently 25 states have already eliminated exemptions and others have limited the exemptions to include elected officials, judicial officers, active military members, law enforcement, and firefighters. With the limited exemptions in place the prosecutions and defense have two tools to eliminate potentially biased jurors from the panel: peremptory challenge