From Mr Karl Schaffenburg Sir: The origin of the jury
lies in the process of `compurgation of law'. Under this system an accused needed to produce a number of people (neighbours from his hundred) to swear that his oath was clean. The 'jury' did not find facts. The system evolved because attestation to the purity of an oath was found to be an unreliable way to adduce evidence (even in the late Middle Ages).
We may then ask, if the jury system has been shown to be unreliable in adducing fact, why should it not change? I suspect this is because very few people who debate this issue (unlike your author) have actually participated in a jury trial. I once acted as defence counsel in a murder trial in which
the state (in the US) was seeking the death penalty, and found (even though I won the case) that asking a jury to review complicated evidence that must be linked to debatable legal theory is, at best, an exercise fraught with the randomness of being reduced to the capacities of the weakest juror.
On every jury there is a 'weakest link', and the public needs to know that it is he or she who controls the outcome — one who would leave a game show early.
Karl Sehaffenburg
Cambridge
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