Jury trials in England and Wales are “fair, unbiased and balanced”, research shows.
The four-year study, Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System, published this week by the Ministry of Justice, shows that the jury system does not discriminate against people on the basis of their ethnicity.
It also demolishes a slew of myths about jury trial: jury pools, it turns out, closely reflect the local population; black and minority groups are not under-represented; and most people do not avoid jury service.
The research, commissioned in June 2002 in response to the Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case was carried out by Professor Cheryl Thomas, director of the Jury Diversity Project at the University of Birmingham.
The study examined the socio-economic background of all jurors summoned in a week in 2003 and a week in 2005 (15,746 jurors). It also used case simulation with real jurors, supplemented by a study of jury verdicts in actual cases.
The study found no indication that the middle classes avoid jury service. In fact the highest rates of jury service are among middle to high income earners.
Commenting, Professor Michael Zander, author of The Crown Court Study (1993), says: “This is a major contribution to our understanding of the jury system. It is encouraging both in showing that jurors are fully representative of the local population and that where the jurors come from mixed ethnic backgrounds their decisions are not influenced by whether the defendant is white, black or Asian. Research is in hand to find out if that is also true of all-white juries.”
