Conformity Of The Jury System

Introduction
Jury system is originated in Ancient Rome, the 12 jurors had to be good male Roman citizen. Females, children, the elderly and slaves were excluding in jury system. The duty of jury was to investigate crime and judge the accused people. It symbolized a high level of democracy which involved citizen in the legal system and transparency of judicial power. Australia today still continuous the jury system in the district court and supreme court. The selection of jury is changed, women now can be selected as the male register voters. The duty of jury is to hear and determine the serious crime and civil matters involving large monetary claims ( New South Wales Government, 2017). Based on the argument juries are a costly, inappropriate
People’s decision may influence by group of people. There are four factors may have influenced the likelihood to conform to the group: group size, unanimity, confidence and self-esteem. (P120-121, Crane& Hannibal, 2012) In Asch’s study with three confederates, 32 pre-cent of participants conformed other’s decisions or behaviour. Only in very large group size can decrease the level of conformity which the number of jurors is not qualified due to the 12 or 15 people. Ash’s research also shows people are easy to conform with the majority’s decision, only when there is one person strongly disagreed, then the results will be significantly changed. Therefore, every jury must have the great encourage to speak out his or her idea even it may different with majority. The confidence of himself or herself plays an important role to avoid group conformity. Perrin and Spencer found the conformity rates in engineers and medical student were almost zero during the replicate Ash’s experiment. It is not means only well-educated people have confidence, but mostly likely, the confident people who believe themselves are well-educated. However, the jurors’ educated level or the confidence level is not examined. Stang also found if the person who has high self-esteem, he or she will less likely to the conform the incorrect response. The level of self-esteem in every juror may different, there is high probability that the low-self-esteem people just follow the other jurors’ words. All of these potential problems are simply caused by the low standard of jury— it only requests to be a registered sate voter. Therefore, there is high probability that the decision of each jurors may lost its justice and