Negative Side Of Jury System And Why It Should Be Abolished

A jury system is a system where the verdict in a case is decided by a jury with justice. Justice is the idea of determining someone’s rightness by the law by fairness. The jury system should no longer exist because it causes problems like people getting false convicted, jurors being influenced by the CSI effect from forensic videos, and ignorant jurors are often biased when debating because they have a lack of knowledge.

To begin with, a reason why the jury should no longer exist is that many people are frequently getting falsely convicted. A guy named Jonny Small in North Carolina was falsely accused of murder when he was a teenager and he was imprisoned for 28 years straight because the judge said he doesn’t see why Small was innocent. Imagine wasting 28 years of your life for something you didn’t do. In the article, “Judge orders man free after 28 years, cites unfair trial”, it states, “About 150 people falsely convicted of crimes - a record number - were exonerated in 2015 according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

The registry is a project of the University of Michigan Law School and has documented more than 1,850 such cases in the U.S.” This quote shows that many jurors are often inattentive deciding whether someone is guilty or not. From the record of 2015, about 150 people were falsely convicted but luckily found innocent. Those 150 people were lucky, unlike Small. Small’ future was destroyed and there’s no way of going back in time to correct the case. So basically someone can claim that you killed a person but you didn’t, you still have a chance of going to jail even though you didn’t do anything because they don’t have enough evidence to prove you innocent. I disagree with that because someone should be innocent until proven guilty to make it justify for the defendant.

Besides, another reason why the jury should no longer exist is that they often get influenced by the CSI effect. The CSI effect which stands for Crime Scene Investigation is an effect that causes many jurors to have more expectations of forensic science and it affects their decisions in a trial. An expert named Tom Tyler said that watching CSI will impact the jurors’ feelings when they are in court examining a case. In the article, “How the CSI Effect Influences American Jurors”, it states, “While some existing evidence on juror decision making is consistent with the CSI effect, it is equally plausible that watching CSI has the opposite impact on jurors and increases their tendency to convict, Tom Tyler said in the Yale Law Review in 2006”.

This evidence shows that CSI can make jurors more likely to convict people when they watch those forensic science TV shows although it isn’t fully confirmed but we have a lot of evidence to back up the fact by some researches. Watching things on TV won’t be reality because people make movies and shows from acting. An example would be a movie about police being able to analyze and solve a robbery scene within 15 minutes using his powerful brain which we all know is impossible to do so.

However, many disagree with the idea that the jury should no longer exist. The reason being is that they need the jury system to educate them about justice and laws. To respond to that, they didn’t realize that there many ignorants jurors that are biased. According to (text 4), it states, “ Yet we also hear many criticisms about juries in practice. Juries are biased. Juries disregard the judge’s instructions or the law itself. >>>or juries know too little and are unable to comprehend the issues in complex cases”.

This evidence shows that many inexperienced jurors don’t know what they are talking about when they are in court which can lead to jurors being biased. Being biased is a big issue because it causes unfairness which counterfeits the case. For example, if I was to be a juror and I hate black people. One day a black man was accused of stealing bread and I decided to put him in jail for 2 years because I hate black people impulsively and that I don’t know what’s the right amount of time to imprison him if he stole bread. It wouldn’t be 2 years for a piece of bread, of course. That will be so unfair for the guy and it is outrageous.

In conclusion, I strongly suggest that the jury system should no longer exist because jurors often falsely convict many innocents, jurors are mostly ignorant and biased, and also get influenced by the CSI effect. These reasons are all valid and backed up from everywhere. It is concluded that a jury system is not needed and it is unreliable when it comes to criminal cases.. To sum it up, the jury system should no longer exist and need to be replaced with something better that can make justice be implemented.