Why Are Juries Outdated

Juries have been regarded as the cornerstone of our criminal justice system in Australia since 1824 when juries were first introduced, however many argue they are an outdated form of determining the outcome of trials. Some of the reasons why juries are outdated are that jurors don’t realise how long some trials go for and there are too many complex documents to consider in coming up with a verdict of some trials. Another reason is the people that serve on juries are the least qualified people.
Juries can be defined as a group of citizens which hears the testimony in legal disputes and determines what it believes is the truth (Family Friendly Jury Duty, 2013). Juries were first introduced in 1215 by King John through the Magna Carter. The Magna Carter was a document that King John was forced to sign by his subjects the Feudal Barons and it was meant to limit his power by law and to protect their rights. One of the articles
The Queensland Justice department states that “The people who typically turn up for jury service are typically people who don 't have to be anywhere else that week.” This means that the people who turn up are the people who don’t have a job and in some cases the least qualified people to serve on a jury which is the reason that 71% of jurors don’t understand the directions (Asher Flynn, 2012). Furthermore only a small minority of people turn up to serve on juries. On average 416 jury notices have to be sent out to fill a 12 person jury (Hurst, 2010), this is a huge waste of time for the Justice Department to send out all of the notices for people to serve on juries and it costs an average of $208 per trial to send them out. Overall juries are outdated because the jurors that attend their jury duty are the last qualified to serve on juries and most people do not turn up to serve on