common. The practice of selecting special jurors to try important
civil cases appears to have sprung up, without legislative
enactment, in the procedure of the courts. Forsyth says that
the first statutory recognition of it is so late as 3 Geo. II. c. 25,
and that in the oldest book of practice in existence (Powell’s
Attourney’s Academy, 1623) there is no allusion to two classes of
jurymen. The acts, however, which regulate the practice allude
to it as well established. The Juries Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict.
c. 77) defines the class of persons entitled and liable to serve on
special juries thus: Every man whose name shall be on the
jurors’ book for any county, &c., and who shall be legally
entitled to be called an esquire, or shall be a person of higher
degree, or a banker or merchant, or who shall occupy a house of
a certain rateable value (e.g. £100 in a town of 20,000 inhabitants,
£50 elsewhere), or a farm of £300 or other premises at £100.
A special juryman receives a fee of a guinea for each cause.
Either party may obtain an order for a special jury, but must
pay the additional expenses created thereby unless the judge
certifies that it was a proper case to be so tried. For the
common jury any man is qualified and liable to serve who has
£10 by the year in land or tenements of freehold, copyhold or
customary tenure; or £20 on lands or tenement held by lease
for twenty-one years or longer, or who being a householder is
rated at £30 in the counties of London and Middlesex, or £20
in any other county. A special jury cannot be ordered in cases
of treason or felony, and may be ordered in cases of misdemeanour
only when the trial is in the king’s bench division of the High
Court, or the civil side at assizes.
Challenge.—It has always been permissible for the parties to challenge the jurors summoned to consider indictments or to try cases. Both in civil and criminal cases a challenge “for cause” is allowed; in criminal cases a peremptory challenge is also allowed. Challenge “for cause” may be either to the array, i.e. to the whole number of jurors returned, or to the polls, i.e. to the jurors individually. A challenge to the array is either a principal challenge (on the ground that the sheriff is a party to the cause, or related to one of the parties), or a challenge for favour (on the ground of circumstances implying “at least a probability of bias or favour in the sheriff”). A challenge to the polls is an exception to one or more jurymen on either of the following grounds: (1) propter honoris respectum, as when a lord of parliament is summoned; (2) propter defectum, for want of qualification; (3) propter affectum, on suspicion of bias or partiality; and (4) propter delictum, when the juror has been convicted of an infamous offence. The challenge propter affectum is, like the challenge to the array, either principal challenge or “to the favour.” In England as a general rule the juror may be interrogated to show want of qualification; but in other cases the person making the challenge must prove it without questioning the juror, and the courts do not allow the protracted examination on the voir dire which precedes every cause célèbre in the United States. On indictments for treason the accused has a right peremptorily to challenge thirty-five of the jurors on the panel; in cases of felony the number is limited to twenty, and in cases of misdemeanour there is no right of peremptory challenge. The Crown has not now the right of peremptory challenge and may challenge only for cause certain (Juries Act 1825, s. 29). In the case of felony, on the first call of the list jurors objected to by the Crown are asked to stand by, and the cause of challenge need not be assigned by the Crown until the whole list has been perused or gone through, or unless there remain no longer twelve jurors left to try the case, exclusive of those challenged. This arrangement practically amounts to giving the Crown the benefit of a peremptory challenge.
Function of Jury.—The jurors were originally the mouthpiece of local opinion on the questions submitted to them, or witnesses to fact as to such questions. They have now become the judges of fact upon the evidence laid before them. Their province is strictly limited to questions of fact, and within that province they are still further restricted to matters proved by evidence in the course of the trial and in theory must not act upon their own personal knowledge and observation except so far as it proceeds from what is called a “view” of the subject matter of the litigation. Indeed it is now well established that if a juror is acquainted with facts material to the case, he should inform the court so that he may be dismissed from the jury and called as a witness; and Lord Ellenborough ruled that a judge would misdirect the jury if he told them that they might reject the evidence and go by their own knowledge. The old decantatum assigns to judge and jury their own independent functions: Ad quaestionem legis respondent judices: ad quaestionem facti juratores (Plowden, 114). But the independence of the jurors as to matters of fact was from an early time not absolute. In certain civil cases a litigant dissatisfied by the verdict could adopt the procedure by attaint, and if the attaint jury of twenty-four found that the first jury had given a false verdict, they were fined and suffered the villainous judgment. Attaints fell into disuse on the introduction about 1665 of the practice of granting new trials when the jury found against the weight of the evidence, or upon a wrong direction as to the law of the case.
In criminal cases the courts attempted to control the verdicts by fining the jurors for returning a verdict contra plenam et manifestam evidentiam. But this practice was declared illegal in Bushell’s case (1670); and so far as criminal cases are concerned the independence of the jury as sole judges of fact is almost absolute. If they acquit, their action cannot be reviewed nor punished, except on proof of wilful and corrupt consent to “embracery” (Juries Act 1825, s. 61). If they convict no new trial can be ordered except in the rare instances of misdemeanours tried as civil cases in the High Court. In trials for various forms of libel during the 18th century, the judges restricted the powers of juries by ruling that their function was limited to finding whether the libel had in fact been published, and that it was for the court to decide whether the words published constituted an offence.[1] By Fox’s Libel Act 1792 the jurors in such cases were expressly empowered to bring in a general verdict of libel or no libel, i.e. to deal with the whole question of the meaning and extent of the incriminated publication. In other words, they were given the same independence in cases of libel as in other criminal cases. This independence has in times of public excitement operated as a kind of local option against the existing law and as an aid to procuring its amendment. Juries in Ireland in agrarian cases often acquit in the teeth of the evidence. In England the independence of the jury in criminal trials is to some extent menaced by the provisions of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907.
While the jury is in legal theory absolute as to matters of fact, it is in practice largely controlled by the judges. Not only does the judge at the trial decide as to the relevancy of the evidence tendered to the issues to be proved, and as to the admissibility of questions put to a witness, but he also advises the jury as to the logical bearing of the evidence admitted upon the matters to be found by the jury. The rules as to admissibility of evidence, largely based upon scholastic logic, sometimes difficult to apply, and almost unknown in continental jurisprudence, coupled with the right of an English judge to sum up the evidence (denied to French judges) and to express his own opinion as to its value (denied to American judges), fetter to some extent the independence or limit the chances of error of the jury.
“The whole theory of the jurisdiction of the courts to interfere with the verdict of the constitutional tribunal is that the court is satisfied that the jury have not acted reasonably upon the evidence but have been misled by prejudice or passion” (Watt v. Watt (1905), App. Cas. 118, per Lord Halsbury). In civil cases the verdict may be challenged on the ground that it is against the evidence or against the weight of the evidence, or unsupported by any evidence. It is said to be against the evidence when the jury have completely misapprehended the facts proved and have drawn an inference so wrong as to be in substance perverse. The dissatisfaction of the trial judge with the verdict is a potent but not conclusive element in determining as to the perversity of a verdict, because of his special opportunity of appreciating the
- ↑ See R. v. Dean of St. Asaph (1789), 3 T.R. 418.
