Everyday lots of disputes occur around us and sometimes they leads to the trial. As we know, there are two types of the trials. Most conflicts were solved through a civil trial, and people who commit a crime are sentenced to some years in a criminal trials. Accepting judges' judgments was taken for granted since people do not exactingly know about the criteria of appropriate punishment for the crime. However, people always had a dissatisfaction to their punishment and wanted to participate in the process of the judgment especially in the criminal trials. Because they thought they had a right to participate since they are the nation living under the law that is used to judge, and their lives are influenced by that law. Therefore, Korean government created a system, Civic Participation in Criminal Trials. It makes people achieve their wish to communicate with the jurisdiction and it works well as the stepping stone of the national participation. Also, by doing this, nation can get more acceptable judgments. With these merits, Civic Participation in Criminal Trials should exist.
When the nation who do not have legal knowledge is due to participate in criminal trials, a jury seems just a gorgeous and easy role. However, they will have a huge responsibility to verdict correctly in the terms of the public. The most important part of the jurors' role is to check whether the decision excepting the public's opinions exists ,and make those opinions to be included in the judgment. According to the Solomon J.M., jurors are needed because they draw a common sense and a collective wisdom which represent the public's opinion into the verdict. Then, the jurors see the incident and the evidence in different aspects from the jurists. Let's take an example. If my attorney cannot understand the motivation of my behavior, my innocence will not be introduced and I will be punished inappropriately. In that case, if there are the jurors who can empathize with my feelings, they will verdict considering my opinions. Then, my satisfaction of the jurisdiction will be increased. It cannot be done if there are no jurors who have other aspects of seeing incident from the lawyers.
Civic participation should be implemented actively in Korea. As the essay (I referred before) said, civic participation in jurisdiction means exerting national opinion in the process of the judgment. Before this system was implemented, nations should get punished according to the judgment rendered by a judge and the law. It occured many problems. Let's think about the situation that a man is caught because of a murder committed for the personal reason. Although he has a reason for his behavior, it cannot be accepted in the aspects of the law. Because the law and the judges tend to regard the results of the case as more important than the motivation they did so. Also, if the defendants want to reveal his or her innocence, they should adduce the exact evidence. It is hard when their motivation is related to the emotional factors. As the emotional factors are subjective, it is not accepted as the decisive evidence to the jurists. Therefore, most defendants are easy to be frustrated. However, if there were the jurors, his emotional motivation would be useful since the jurors can accept those evidences and consider them when they give a verdict. Unlike the jurists, the jurors are slightly free from the rule of the law in the process of the trial because they are not specialist in the law. They are just representatives of the public. Therefore, the jurors can understand the defendant's opinion emotionally and agree with their opinion freely. It may help the decrease of falsely charged person.
Also people's satisfaction toward the judgment will be increased because it contains more thoughts of the public by mirroring the jurors' opinion which represents the public's opinion. Then, it can also solve the problem that nations are indifferent to jurisdiction. As we are under the law that is used to judge, we should pay attention to the judgment. However, many people do not show concern because they think the trial and the judgment is far from them. Therefore It is important to implement Civic Participation in Criminal Trials which increases the national participation. It will be helpful to make people to have an interest in the jurisdiction of the Korea. Although some opponents say civic participation in criminal trials leads to many problems and it is not fit for the judgment, civic participation in criminal trials should exist to get acceptable results, to reflect nation's opinions to jurisdiction and to make people participate in jurisdiction.
Also people's satisfaction toward the judgment will be increased because it contains more thoughts of the public by mirroring the jurors' opinion which represents the public's opinion. Then, it can also solve the problem that nations are indifferent to jurisdiction. As we are under the law that is used to judge, we should pay attention to the judgment. However, many people do not show concern because they think the trial and the judgment is far from them. Therefore It is important to implement Civic Participation in Criminal Trials which increases the national participation. It will be helpful to make people to have an interest in the jurisdiction of the Korea. Although some opponents say civic participation in criminal trials leads to many problems and it is not fit for the judgment, civic participation in criminal trials should exist to get acceptable results, to reflect nation's opinions to jurisdiction and to make people participate in jurisdiction.
Nations participating in criminal trials have more responsibility toward the incident than the attorney. As Professor Solomon writes,
lawyers tend to pay more attention to the monetary aspects of the litigation than answers for the wrongs. On the other hands, jurors are paid a fixed amount of money. Therefore, in the situation when the jurors and the lawyers have to participate in trials which is not economical to the lawyers, jurors will try to verdict more seriously than the lawyers. Trial is the most important process of solving the problem, and it should be progressed seriously. However, when the jury did not participate in the trials, the judgments were given with the lawyers who negligent at proving wrongs, and the judges who sentence a punishment by just taking account of those lawyers' opinion. Now, jurors are blocking these bad results by asserting their opinion toward the judicature. It is same as closing the judicature's scamper which is ignoring the innocence of the defendants and the opinion of the public. The jurors are paying more attention to the defendants' innocent and preventing inappropriate punishment. It can be done because of the existence of the jury.
To communicate with the public, Korean government implemented civic participation in criminal trials system. Therefore, we can see an importance of the jury who represents the public. It leads to increase of the nation's satisfaction toward the judgment. Also the jurors can sentence a verdict asides from principle of evidential justice. Many people suffer from the principle of evidential justice because less exact evidences cannot be accepted in the aspects of the law. So, the innocent person who only has emotional evidences will be punished inappropriately. However, jury is far from these institutions, so they can verdict based on emotional factors (if the evidence the defendant presented is all the emotional evidences). It leads to more flexible judgment.
Although the opponents of the jury system doubt the jurors' importance and the qualification of them, jurors are playing important role in trials as the connecting link between nations and the judicature by asserting the opinion of the public. It leads to the increase of nation's participation in jurisdiction and satisfaction for the judgment. Also, they work with lots of responsibility to find out innocent person which is better than the lawyers' who value the monetary aspects of the litigation.
As the system, Civic participation in criminal trials, was implemented recently, many people are against the system because of the certainty of the benefit of implementing it. The opponents say they cannot believe the jurors because they are easily misled by barristers' techniques to strengthen their evidence with little information about the law. Also, according to Randle and Pottle's writing, jury are helping a spy to escape from prison. It can be inferred that the opponents doubt the jury's ability to reach a verdict. They can have no faith in the justice of the jury since they are selected randomly. However, It is important why the jury are needed in criminal trials. As the jurors are comprised of randomly selected people, they have different jobs each other. It means the jurors have more various knowledge than the judges, and they can understand a wide scope of cases. Actually, It is the huge problem that the judges who only studied about liberal arts subjects cannot understand the dispute occurs based on natural sciences. Therefore, the jury's work knowledge will be helpful to judge. If they get the defendants' point and judge properly, it will lead to appropriate punishment by preventing the judges from misunderstanding. These jury's verdicts came from their standards of judging. They are comprised of the people who over 20 years old. According to Korean law, they are considered as the people who already have an ability to do decision making based on their criteria. Therefore, we can accept their verdict since it arises from the jury's standard of judging the defendants' guilt. Although barristers confuse the jury with various techniques, the jury has the ability to distinguish them. So it is no matter worrying that the jury will be blinded.
The opponents also believe that the jury's verdict helps spy to escape from prison. It is not true because the final judgment consists of the jury's verdict and the judge's judgment. The motive of Civic participation in criminal trials comes from America's jury system. However, it was implemented differently from the United States. Therefore, the judge does not have to consider the jury's verdict unlike the citizens jury system. It means the jury just play a role as an adviser who understand the incident in different aspects and provide the opinion of the public. Although the opponents doubt the jury's suitability for participating in trials, the jury is necessary because they play an important role as the adviser by asserting the opinion of the public. Therefore, civic participation in criminal trials should exist.
People always had a complaint about some judgment and sought the judgment that coincides with their opinion. As time goes on, people felt more longing for maintaining their right by asserting their opinion to the jurisdiction. Because of this reason, the civic participation in criminal trials system was implemented. It is the best plan for compensating people's dissatisfaction of the judgment caused by communication gap between the public and the judicature. People went into feeling more satisfaction by counting their opinion through the jury and getting judgment which includes their opinion. Then, what if there is no system like this? Innocent person can get punished inappropriately since the judicature can misunderstand the situation. The nation will be more indifferent to the jurisdiction although they are influenced by that. Rather than seeing Civic participation in criminal trials as the imprudent system, seeing it as a link between the public and the jurisdiction is better.
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Bibliography
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Lawteacher's student. Jury System Criminal. ProQuest Digital Dissertations.
Nicky Harley. (2014, June 29). On trial:how juries reach their verdicts . The Times. Retrieved from http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/
Solomon, J.M. (2012). The Political Puzzle of the Civil Jury. [Abstract]. Emory Law Journal (61), William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-224.
