TRIAL BY JURY
No one can lampoon traditional trial by jury like the inimitable Mark Twain. In ROUGHING IT, he writes:
"The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupants were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented trial by jury, and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for 'defeating' justice that human wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that the simpletons would go on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go on using his candle-clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day, news could not travel fast, and hence he could find a jury of honest intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try--but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains.
"[S]uch men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone can mete out unsullied justice.
"When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men were impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones on the streets were cognizant of!...
"The verdict rendered by the jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?
"The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury. It is a shame that we continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago....Why could not jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty an 'equal chance' with fools and miscreants?"
P.782-783, MARK TWAIN (1984)
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
TRIAL BY JURY
TRIAL BY JURY
No one can lampoon traditional trial by jury like the inimitable Mark Twain. In ROUGHING IT, he writes:
"The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupants were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented trial by jury, and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for 'defeating' justice that human wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that the simpletons would go on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go on using his candle-clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day, news could not travel fast, and hence he could find a jury of honest intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try--but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains.
"[S]uch men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone can mete out unsullied justice.
"When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men were impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones on the streets were cognizant of!...
"The verdict rendered by the jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?
"The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury. It is a shame that we continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago....Why could not jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty an 'equal chance' with fools and miscreants?"
P.782-783, MARK TWAIN (1984)
