It is not at all clear that at the outset the trial by the country (in pais; in patria) was before another and different jury. The earliest instances look as if the twelve men and the four vills were the patria and had to agree. But by the time of Edward I. the accused seems to have been allowed to call in a second jury. A person accused by the inquest of the hundred was allowed to have the truth of the charge tried by another and different jury.[5] “There is,” says Forsyth, “no possibility of assigning a date to this alteration.” “In the time of Bracton (middle of the 13th century) the usual mode of determining innocence or guilt was by combat or appeal. But in most cases the appellant had the option of either fighting with his adversary or putting himself on his country for trial”—the exceptions being murder by secret poisoning, and certain circumstances presumed by the law to be conclusive of guilt.[6] But the separation must have been complete by 1352, in which year it was enacted “that no indictor shall be put in inquests upon deliverance of the indictees of felonies or trespass if he be challenged for that same cause by the indictee.”
The jurors, whatever their origin, differed from the Saxon doomsmen and the jurats of the Channel Islands in that they adjudged nothing; and from compurgators or oath-helpers in that they were not witnesses called by a litigant to support his case (Pollock and Maitland, i. 118). Once established, the jury of trial whether of actions or indictments developed on the same lines. But at the outset this jury differed in one material respect from the modern trial jury. The ancient trial jury certify to the truth from their knowledge of the facts, however acquired. In other words, they resemble witnesses or collectors of local evidence or gossip rather than jurors. The complete withdrawal of the witness character from the jury is connected by Forsyth with the ancient rules of law as to proof of written instruments, and a peculiar mode of trial per sectam. When a deed is attested by witnesses, you have a difference between the testimony of the witness, who deposes to the execution of the deed, and the verdict of the jury as to the fact of execution. It has been contended with much plausibility that in such cases the attesting witnesses formed part of the jury. Forsyth doubts that conclusion, although he admits that, as the jurors themselves were originally mere witnesses, there was no distinction in principle between them and the attesting witnesses, and that the attesting witnesses might be associated with the jury in the discharge of the function of giving a verdict. However that may be, in the reign of Edward III., although the witnesses are spoken of “as joined to the assize,” they are distinguished from the jurors. The trial per sectam was used as an alternative to the assize or jury, and resembled in principle the system of compurgation. The claimant proved his case by vouching a certain number of witnesses (secta), who had seen the transaction in question, and the defendant rebutted the presumption thus created by vouching a larger number of witnesses on his own side. In cases in which this was allowed, the jury did not interpose at all, but in course of time the practice arose of the witnesses of the secta telling their story to the jury. In these two instances we have the jury as judges of the facts sharply contrasted with the witnesses who testify to the facts; and, with the increasing use of juries and the development of rules of evidence, this was gradually established as the true principle of the system. In the reign of Henry IV. we find the judges declaring that the jury after they have been sworn should not see or take with them any other evidence than that which has been offered in open court. But the personal knowledge of the jurors was not as yet regarded as outside the evidence on which they might found a verdict, and the stress laid upon the selection of jurymen from the neighbourhood of the cause of the action shows that this element was counted on, and, in fact, deemed essential to a just consideration of the case. Other examples of the same theory of the duties of the jury may be found in the language used by legal writers. Thus it has been said that the jury may return a verdict although no evidence at all be offered, and again, that the evidence given in court is not binding on the jury, because they are assumed from their local connexion to be sufficiently informed of the facts to give a verdict without or in opposition to the oral evidence. A recorder of London, temp. Edward VI., says that, “if the witnesses at a trial do not agree with the jurors, the verdict of the twelve shall be taken and the witnesses shall be rejected.” Forsyth suggests as a reason for the continuance of this theory that it allowed the jury an escape from the attaint, by which penalties might be imposed on them for delivering a false verdict in a civil case. They could suggest that the verdict was according to the fact, though not according to the evidence.
In England the trial jury (also called petty jury or traverse jury) consists of twelve jurors, except in the county court, where the number is eight. In civil but not in criminal cases the trial may by consent be by fewer than twelve jurors, and the verdict may by consent be that of the majority. The rule requiring a unanimous verdict has been variously explained. Forsyth regards the rule as intimately connected with the original character of the jury as a body of witnesses, and with the conception common in primitive society that safety is to be found in the number of witnesses, rather than the character of their testimony. The old notion seems to have been that to justify an accusation, or to find a fact, twelve sworn men must be agreed. The afforcing of the jury, already described, marks an intermediate stage in the development. Where the juries were not unanimous new jurors were added until twelve were found to be of the same opinion. From the unanimous twelve selected out of a large number to the unanimous twelve constituting the whole jury was a natural step, which, however, was not taken without hesitation. In some old cases the verdict of eleven jurors out of twelve was accepted, but it was decided in the reign of Edward III. that the verdict must be the unanimous opinion of the whole jury. Diversity of opinion was taken to imply perversity of judgment, and the law sanctioned the application of the harshest methods to produce unanimity. The jurors while considering their verdict were not allowed a fire nor any refreshment, and it is said in some of the old books that, if they failed to agree, they could be put in a cart and drawn after the justices to the border of the county, and then upset into a ditch. These rude modes of enforcing unanimity has been softened in later practice, but in criminal cases the rule of unanimity is still absolutely fixed.
In civil cases and in trials for misdemeanour, the jurors are allowed to separate during adjournments and to return to their homes; in trials for treason, treason-felony and murder, the jurors, once sworn, must not separate until discharged. But by an act of 1897 jurors on trials for other felonies may be allowed by the court to separate in the same way as on trials for misdemeanour.
These rules do not apply to a jury which has retired to consider its verdict. During the period of retirement it is under the keeping of an officer of the court.
At common law aliens were entitled to be tried by a jury de medietate linguae—half Englishmen, half foreigners, not necessarily compatriots of the accused. This privilege was abolished by the Naturalization Act 1870; but by the Juries Act 1870 aliens who have been domiciled in England or Wales for ten years or upwards, if in other respects duly qualified, are liable to jury service as if they were natural-born subjects (s. 8).
A jury of matrons is occasionally summoned, viz. on a writ de ventre inspiciendo, or where a female condemned to death pleads pregnancy in stay of execution.
The jurors are selected from the inhabitants of the county, borough or other area for which the court to which they are summoned is commissioned to act. In criminal cases, owing to the rules as to venue and that crime is to be tried in the neighbourhood where it is committed, the mode of selection involves a certain amount of independent local knowledge on the part of the jurors. Where local prejudice has been aroused for or against the accused, which is likely to affect the chance of a fair trial, the proceedings may be removed to another jurisdiction, and there are a good many offences in which by legislation the accused may be tried where he is caught, irrespective of the place where he is alleged to have broken the law. As regards civil cases, a distinction was at an early date drawn between local actions which must be tried in the district in which they originated, and transitory actions which could be tried in any county. These distinctions are now of no importance, as the place of trial of a civil action is decided as a matter of procedure and convenience, and regard is not necessarily paid to the place at which a wrong was done or a contract broken.
The qualifications for, and exemptions from, service as a petty juror are in the main contained in the Juries Acts 1825 and 1870, though a number of further exemptions are added by scattered enactments. The exemptions include members of the legislature and judges, ministers of various denominations, and practising barristers and solicitors, registered medical practitioners and dentists, and officers and soldiers of the regular army. Persons over sixty are exempt but not disqualified. Lists of the jurors are prepared by the overseers in rural parishes and by the town clerks in boroughs, and are submitted to justices for revision. When jurors are required for a civil or criminal trial they are summoned by the sheriff or, if he cannot act, by the coroner.
Special and Common Juries.—For the purpose of civil trials in the superior courts there are two lists of jurors, special and 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.