"Sure, but he had to say what he did. Didn't he have to hold down his job with the company?"
The rest of the jury sink back resigned and despondent. They will never get out. One of them ventures.
"The judge told us that the law was—"
He is interrupted.
"Oh, we don't care so much about the law. What we want to do is to do what is right."
Somewhere, somehow, and by non-understandable methods the verdict is reached. If the jury ask for further instructions, they file back into the court-room and the judge proceeds to elucidate the hidden mystery of the law in much the same manner he did in his charge. They return again not satisfied, and take up the discussion.
The most dramatic moment in the trial is when the officer comes in and announces the jury have agreed. While they slowly file in, the prisoner or the parties watch them with soul-tearing eyes; the lawyers with anxious expectancy. There is an electric thrill in the air. In some mysterious manner their verdict becomes known before the foreman speaks. Call it thought transference, mind reading, or what you will, there is a quick understanding from their faces, their manner of walking in, and their final pronouncement is only a confirmation of what was expected.
The jury has spoken, the lawyer who has lost moves to set aside the verdict. The jury looks startled. Is it possible that after all that trial and all that deliberation the judge is going to upset it again and have the long trouble gone over. The judge denies the motion or takes it under advisement. Only on rare occasions does he set the verdict aside then and there. The verdict must have been outrageous, absurd, clearly a compromise, or absolutely and shockingly against common sense. The theory of the law is that the verdict of a jury is a final judgment on the facts by the best judges of the facts. It will not lightly or for small reasons be interfered with.
The question of belief in the jury system is one of the most futile of all large questions. In the first place, jury trial is so deeply engraved in the constitutional bill of rights that one might as well ask: "Do you believe in citizenship?" "Do you believe in the United States of America?" Secondly, trial by jury is so completely involved in the present system of court trial and procedure, that they are inseparable. The evils of the whole attach to the part and the beneficent aspect of the courts pertain equally to jury trials.
Coming down to a concrete case and leaving the abstract principle to the theorist, there are certain obvious things to be said for and against jury trial. The jury represents the opinion of the common or ordinary man—the vox populi. Twelve men picked at random are probably neither all capitalists nor all laborers. They are made up of a few of both, but the majority, if not all, are the small tradesmen or the great middle class. These men are not ignorant, prejudiced, or unintelligent. They have a limited experience, but their judgment is the judgment of mediocrity and mediocrity is what is wanted. The professional man, the expert, the specialist is needed for the special degree of administration, but for the determination of the actual right and justice, what is needed is the instinct of the ordinary man,—the plain ordinary common sense.