Jury Trial in the US

One of the fundamental rights under the American justice system is the right to jury trial. It is protected under Art III Section 2 of the US Constitution which states that “trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment; shall be by jury and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.” The Sixth Amendment extended the right to the state and district where the crime has been committed.
The 1968 case of Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 Us 145, the US Supreme Court explained the reason for jury trial, to wit:
“Those who wrote our Constitution knew from the history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the biased or eccentric judge. If defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it."
One of the advantages of the jury trial is that the accused can expect from it “common-sense judgment of ordinary people. It is contrary to the decision of a cold and neutral judge who makes decisions full of citations of authorities and references to proven and undisputed facts. The jury, however, decides the case even without putting in writing the bases of its verdict.
The weakness, however, of the jury trial is that there is a perception that they are incapable of adequately understanding the evidence or determining the factual issues. An exhaustive study made on this issue concluded that in criminal cases juries do understand the evidence and come to sound conclusions in most of the cases.

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