Study On Giving Reasons For Jury Verdicts In Criminal Cases

Except preface and epilogue,the article is divided into forth parts:The first part discusses the conflicts between the institution of ratio decidendi and the jury system.The institution of ratio decidendi can provide a safeguard against arbitrariness,solve the legal wrangle effectively and allow the right of appeal to be preserved.However,jury trial historically developed without a reason-giving requirement.France also retained this tradition when changing the traditional model into a collaborative court model of lay adjudicators sitting and deliberating alongside professional judges in criminal matters.There are theoretical and institutional collisions between the jury system and the system of ratio decidendi.The second part analyses the cases of the European court of the Human Rights.Referring to the Court’s case law,the Court holds that the Convention does not require jurors to give reasons for their decision and Article 6 does not preclude a defendant from being tried by a lay jury even where reasons are not given for the verdict.Nevertheless,for the requirements of a fair trial to be satisfied,the accused and the public must be able to understand the verdict that has been given;this is a vital safeguard against arbitrariness.The European Court of Human Rights seeks to balance the right to fair trials and the arbitrariness avoidance by dealing with applications concerning unreasoned jury verdicts.The Court emphasize that the jury exists in a variety of forms in different States and it is not the Court’s task to standardize them.To show its respect for the different models of lay adjudication and the Court ’ s case-law,the Court reiterates that it is not creating a reason-giving requirement for jury.The Court put forward a requirement of explaining the precise reason for jury verdict or alternative procedural guarantees in Taxquet v.Belgium,which is ultimately aimed at strengthening the juror’s decision-making power,ensuring that the jurors actually participate in trials and preventing judges involved in jury trials from circumventing judicial responsibilities through the jury system.The third part observes the experience of reasoned jury verdicts in Spanish and the jury system reform in Belgium and France.Since the Spanish revived the classic jury in 1995,it has created a requirement that the jurors give reasons for its verdict and established thestandard of judging the adequacy of reasons,which is the most innovative aspect of the Spanish jury law.In Belgium,since the case of Taxquet v.Belgium,has amended the procedure in the Assize Court by requiring the jury to sate the main reasons for the verdict reached by the jury.The reason was usually stated by the jurors.The jury may also summon the judge or the secretary of the court into the deliberation room to help them formulate their reasons.In 2011,France enacted a new statute mandating that its mixed juries provide reasons for their verdicts.The statute provides that the president or one of the professional associate judges of the court are tasked with drafting the judgment’s reasons and consigning them to a document called the reason giving sheet,which need to be signed by the jury foreperson.The reasons for decision consist in the main evidence that convince the court.The constituent elements of this evidence are the facts that the jury explained before voting on the questions in the list of questions.In practice of the French Assize Court,the jury’s reasons were written by the president dominating the proceedings and its main readers were the reviewing court and the general public.So the reform is essentially aimed at keeping professional judges in tighter check and policing the president.The forth part is about the enlightenment to China from the cases of European court of Human Rights and the experience of reasoned jury verdicts in European countries.To realize the expected function of the people assessor system to promote judicial justice and enhance the public credibility of the judiciary in our country,it’s necessary to create a requirement that jurors give reasons for their verdict and that the opinions of the jurors are reflected in the judgment documents.To ensure the adequacy of the juror’s reasons,this article advocates reducing the difficulty of giving reasons by some procedure safeguards including direction or guidance provided by the presiding judge to the jurors on the legal issues arising or the evidence adduced and question list put to the jury by the judge.The juror’s reasons for its answer to the question list could be the statement of the evidence and there’s no need for them to say why and how it arrived at its determination of the facts from those evidence.On the reflection of the juror’s opinion in the judgment,this article advocate attaching the jury’s majority opinion to the judgement which was done in French.