Bench trial jury duty

[KenzoLowry]

After a recent scenario where a few of us on our old people characters attended a bench trial and seeing the work that has been done on a new courtroom/city hall a few of us think that having the chance to be selected for jury duty would make for great roleplay and bring the courts more active and and enjoyable for everyone within the city.

for example 

5 people from the audience would be randomly selected by a G6 officer.  

The vote would have to be unanimous and discussed in a separate room.

1 member of the Jury would be selected to write down on piece of paper the Jurys decision. The judge would then issue the appropriate sentence.

obviously this could be done in many ways with good roleplay.

This wouldn't require any dev work and as G6 are already present it just offers a new way to enjoy court roleplay from all sides.

 

[ricosky]

-1, as someone studying to be a barrister, and someone who has a solicitor character, I would not like to see trials by jury. I simply do not trust people to actually adjudicate the matter. IRL jury selection takes a good amount of time and juries receive instructions on when to reach what verdict. If you just picked 5 random people out of the audience it would just end up people deciding to say not guilty because the defendant is their mate. Especially if we require a unanimous verdict, (IRL a jury needs 10 people majority for a verdict) every trial would end not guilty or have a hung jury.

 

[Alice]

-1 can see this ending up biased one way or another, only people attending the case will have knowledge and some sort of agenda. irl the jury follow strict procedures in order to allow for an unbiased trial.

 

[KenzoLowry]

-1, as someone studying to be a barrister, and someone who has a solicitor character, I would not like to see trials by jury. I simply do not trust people to actually adjudicate the matter. IRL jury selection takes a good amount of time and juries receive instructions on when to reach what verdict. If you just picked 5 random people out of the audience it would just end up people deciding to say not guilty because the defendant is their mate. Especially if we require a unanimous verdict, (IRL a jury needs 10 people majority for a verdict) every trial would end not guilty or have a hung jury.

I made this suggestion so people could get involved with court proceeding without having to have a solicitor characters as i feel its very limited to who can roleplay. you also mention that you don't trust people but there could possibly be procedure put in place for conflict of interest as everyone that enter the court room is ID and could have a PNC Check before entering the courtroom as a lot of gang members are known to police and the courts.

not everyone in the city is criminal and may want this sort of roleplay without being a solicitor. 

if a unanimous decision is decided the judge can always overrule.

With the IRL comment yes I understand the in real life we may have 10 but this isn't real life and at the end of the day we are all roleplaying in a game and have to adapt for what we can possible achieve.

 

[Roscoe1991]

i think this would be good for the city  

 

[hayley]

i do quite like the sound of this.

 

[Nikolai]

sadly i'm gonna have to agree with alice and ricosky, having a jury for court cases wouldn't work nor be beneficial.

having been police command for a good while before stepping down, i've seen how long it takes just to get 5 people ready for a court case(can take months) having to get a full jury(or partially full) would be even worse and would slow down the court system more than it already is.


another thing is bias, i've talked about this somewhere else on a discord server, but the issue with a jury is that most people hate police(either for valid reason or because "i just want to"/"it fits my characters story despite never having had a bed interaction with police"/so on) and would 6/10 ten times just vote in whatever favour that fucks over the police simply because the can, in that case even if there's video proof of Isak Vladislav murdering 72 people in cold blood(bit over the top and would probs not have a jury) they would just say "not guilty" for memes

 

[Antollyme]

We've discussed this before among ourselves as judges. Its a hard thing to do that ensures a fair outcome.

Bench Trials were something I wanted to increase more when I first became a judge but they need to be relatively speedy. Crims being sent down for a 200 minutes sentence dont want to add another 60 minutes to their "detention" time only to be given a harsher sentence than before.  Its mainly beneficial to the Crim to do the trial in the hopes the police dont have enough evidence to warrant set charges to get time reduced. 

If a jury was to be added in this process, it would slow the process down considerably. The deliberation alone between the jurors would take considerable time, then once thats occurred and the defendant is found guilty, the judge would need to then spend time finding an appropriate sentence.

So other than the possibility for bias, (which usually those who turn up to Bench Trials are), it makes for the process to be worse off than before.

There is definitely the possibility of a jury trial to occur, but I believe its only possible if the outcome is predetermined and the jury is simply there for the roleplay. (e.g. a corrupt police officer Liam I believe, deliberately set a roleplay story up with the intent of getting caught and prosecuted and ultimately sent to prison, so the trial the officer has was all for show/roleplay.) OR its a high profile case that might warrant a jury.

The bias is a real concern but its not something that makes it impossible to deal with. Those who found to have bias would be held in contempt and those who come to an unreasonable conclusion, we as the judges would just overrule their deliberation. 

So the idea inst ruled out, just needs to be the right time/place/situation for it to occur and its entirely down to the presiding judge if they choose to do one (Most wont for the outlined reasons, also the ball ache of trying to organize a date for all involved to show up is a real inhibitor if you want to get 10 more people to deliberate on the matter)

 

[MissRachie]

I get where all the -1 votes are coming from HOWEVER. As someone who is *legal* within the city it is harder and harder to find things to do... I get there would be a lot of trial and error but if done properly I think it would add a great amount of decent RP within the city especially liven up the courts a bit...

As it is you can't enter a court room without a valid form of ID and are searched upon entering by multiple G6 officers... IF a legal person with no violent crimes and such (same as to join rangers and fire) they would then have the option of being part of the Jury that would be selected at random before the trial starts.

People that are against the police and therefore vote against the police for no valid reason would be removed from doing more Jury duties and would face criminal actions against them.

Gang members, Known violent offenders and such wouldn't be able to apply to be Jury and IF they lied and were found out they themselves would then be accountable and face charges from a judge/police .

Even if Jury was only possible for the smaller crimes like robbing shops and stuff at the beginning and see where it goes  The RP scenarios created from this could be amazing for all involved.

 

[Unknown]

No. -1
Also this is something that is up to the Judges so better to make a court ticket and hear from them.
 

Even if Jury was only possible for the smaller crimes like robbing shops and stuff at the beginning and see where it goes  The RP scenarios created from this could be amazing for all involved.

If you want something like this better to go to the court discord and make a ticket and ask, although I Highly doubt they will entertain the idea you can always just ask anyways.

@MrTurdTastic@Antollyme@Ellis Karsaerian

 

[Chilli]

not everyone in the city is criminal and may want this sort of roleplay without being a solicitor. 

Thats not the issue. the issue is friend groups. People will abuse and just create a new character to go to a friends court case as jury

 

[George Harris]

Implemented - Bench trials have been conducted and seem to be good fun for all those involved. Look out for the next one!

Thanks for the suggestion!​