What are the two types of juries in Texas?

What are the two types of juries in Texas?

There are two kinds of juries in Texas: “petit juries” and “grand juries.” In criminal cases, a “petit jury” is selected to serve in a particular trial in order to decide on the defendant’s guilt or innocence.

What is the alternative to having a trial with a jury?

Bench Trials– a bench trial acts just like a regular trial, but instead of presenting your case to a jury of your peers, the judge acts as the jury and issues a verdict.

How are jurors selected for a trial?

Jury lists are compiled from voter registrations and driver license or ID renewals. A panel of jurors is then assigned to a courtroom. The prospective jurors are randomly selected to sit in the jury box. At this stage, they will be questioned in court by the judge and/or attorneys in the United States.

What are the alternatives to juries?

Another alternative may be for the tribunal of fact in Crown Court trials to be a specially trained state-appointed representative or single judge. However, these alternatives fail to have the independence from the state and judiciary which the traditional jury has.

Do Alternate jurors sit in on deliberations?

Alternate jurors hear the evidence just as the other jurors do, but they don’t participate in the deliberations unless they replace an original juror.

What are the strengths of the jury system?

One strength of the jury is that they can be considered an independent ‘fact finding body’. Consisting of 12 or 6 ordinary men and women, the role of the jury is to determine whether the burden has been met by the prosecutor or plaintiff.

What are the disadvantages of juries?

Disadvantages

• Perverse decisions – can be a protest against the law.
• Jury tampering – bribery/threats.
• Radical views/bias as there is no right to a multi-racial jury.
• Media coverage may influence jurors.
• Lack of understanding – especially for fraud trails = complex +time consuming.

What are the disadvantages of the jury system?

There are a number of disadvantages to having a trial by jury. As the people on a jury do not generally have a legal background, it is possible that they may not entirely understand complex legal documents or argument, or in-depth forensic evidence.

Why would someone not want a jury trial?

typically if the injury claimed is relatively minor and the defendant’s act causing it is not particularly bad, juries can be very unsympathetic to the plaintiff. for example, you might have a case where a normal person hits someone in the rear because they were distracted or daydreaming.

Can a jury overrule a judge?

In U.S. federal criminal cases, the term is “judgment of acquittal”. JNOV is the practice in American courts whereby the presiding judge in a civil jury trial may overrule the decision of a jury and reverse or amend their verdict. In literal terms, the judge enters a judgment notwithstanding the jury verdict.

Why the jury system is flawed?

Juries are biased. Juries disregard the judge’s instructions or the law itself when reaching a verdict. Juries know too much about a case from media publicity to be able to render a fair judgment, or juries know too little and are unable to comprehend the issues in complex cases.

How often are juries wrong?

Thus, the 77 percent agreement rate means that juries are accurate up to 87 percent of the time or less, or reach an incorrect verdict in at least one out of eight cases. “Some of the errors are incorrect acquittals, where the defendant goes free, and some are incorrect convictions,” Spencer said.

Is jury system fair?

The jury system is designed to ensure that justice prevails through the use of a fair trial by one’s peers. However, it is a flawed system. Reduces possibility of corruption: Because there are many jurors making the decision, it is difficult to bribe or corrupt them all.

Why does America have a jury system?

After the United States won the war, the framers of the U.S. Constitution inserted the right to a jury trial in several places: in Article III, Section 2, the right to a trial by jury in criminal cases; in the Fifth Amendment, which provided for grand juries in criminal cases; in the Sixth Amendment, which guaranteed …

How many jurors are in a jury?

12 jurors

What happens if you end up with a hung jury?

If the jurors cannot agree on a verdict, a hung jury results, leading to a mistrial. The case is not decided, and it may be tried again at a later date before a new jury. Or the plaintiff or government may decide not to pursue the case further and there will be no subsequent trial.

How long do jury trials last?

During the first 6 hours, the verdict must be unanimous. After six hours of deliberation, the verdict can be reached by all but one dissenting juror. The special verdict form is then presented to the judge.

Can an acquittal be overturned?

With one exception, in the United States an acquittal cannot be appealed by the prosecution because of constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled: If the judgment is upon an acquittal, the defendant, indeed, will not seek to have it reversed, and the government cannot.

Is an acquittal the same as not guilty?

“Not guilty” and “acquittal” are synonymous. In other words, to find a defendant not guilty is to acquit. At trial, an acquittal occurs when the jury (or the judge if it’s a judge trial) determines that the prosecution hasn’t proved the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Does acquitted mean innocent?

Definition. At the end of a criminal trial, a finding by a judge or jury that a defendant is not guilty. An acquittal signifies that a prosecutor failed to prove his or her case beyond a reasonable doubt, not that a defendant is innocent.

What happens if a jury Cannot reach a decision?

A ‘hung jury’ will be declared if a verdict is still not reached, and the prosecution will then decide whether it is in the public interest to retry the case.