St Patrick's Juries

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Today is St. Patrick's Day, so I thought I'd write about the jury system in Ireland. It turns out to be a complex and poignant topic.

A thoughtful 1999 paper traces the struggles of Ireland's jury system up to that time. It's called "The Jury System in Contemporary Ireland: In the Shadow of a Troubled Past," by Irish law scholars John D. Jackson, Katie Quinn, and Tom O'Malley, published in Law and Contemporary Problems.

"Formidable problems"

The paper explains how the "troubles" in Northern Ireland turned the great strength of the jury system into a great flaw. A primary reason we have jurors, the authors write, is that a lay jury serves "as an independent buffer within the criminal justice system between the state and the individual." But when jurors lose all trust in the state, as many citizens of Northern Ireland did, a system based on juries becomes lawless:

When the legitimacy of the state is questioned by a sizeable proportion of the community from which the lay element is drawn, however, and it proves difficult to obtain convictions, the jury system can present formidable problems of law enforcement, especially when the conditions are extreme enough to lend themselves to violence and intimidation.

The authors describe what the British government did to get convictions in this climate, most notably the no-jury trials recommended by a commission headed by Lord Diplock: "Until recent years, when the violence has abated, 'Diplock' trials, as trials by judge alone in emergency cases have come to be called in Northern Ireland, accounted for around a third of all serious cases in the jurisdiction." They go on to describe "measures which have reduced the right to jury trial [which] have mirrored changes in England and Wales, and, indeed, further inroads . . . by virtue of the nonjury courts established both north and south of the border."

History, culture, and jury trials

Many of these changes have been surprisingly uncontroversial, the authors claim. They believe this is due not just to the government's acting to contract the jury trial, but also to cultural and historical forces:

For a variety of reasons, jury trial has not proved well suited to Irish circumstances. Jury intimidation and prejudice, distrust of the state, considerable community segregation, and the small and largely rural nature of the jurisdictions have combined to ensure that jury trial is by no means as entrenched in Irish legal culture as it is in England and Wales.

Although a great number of these obstacles to the growth of a robust jury system have abated in recent times, jury trial has failed to flourish on the island.

And now?

I haven't found a good description of the Irish jury system today. In 2006, the Guardian and other newspapers reported that as peace appeared to build in Ireland, the Diplock courts were being abolished — "[b]ut judge-only trials will be retained for 'exceptional' cases where juries could still be intimidated, the Northern Ireland Office has proposed."

But that's as far current as I can bring it, at least without help. Irish blogger Daithí Mac Síthigh hosted a great Blawg Review at Lex Ferenda today, the St. Patrick's Day Festival promised by Blawg Review's Ed. last week. I'm hoping there's an Irish blogger who can bring me up to date on Irish juries.

Photo by Rona Proudfoot at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronnie44052/607113954/; license details there.