Under British and Australian laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defendant's past criminal record. This protects the person who is being accused of the crime.
Some lawyers have suggested that this practice should be changed and that a jury should be given all the past facts before they reach their decision about the case.
Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer.
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No one can argue that there is no perfect judicial system at the moment. Each country has a slightly different approach to the way of prosecution. British and Australian laws have juries, who are valuable at times when evidence is not enough to make a verdict. At the moment juries have no access to a prosecuted person’s criminal record in order to deny them from making an emotion-based decision. However, some people believe that this practice should be changed. I tend to disagree with them.
To begin with, jury system is founded upon the principle that juries should judge based on facts and provided evidence. They should use their human emotions and intuition only to fill the so called ‘’legal gap’’ at times when even though evidence is clear, it cannot be used by judge due to legislative formalities. Giving juries additional information about accused person’s criminal past would result in more emotion based decisions and break the understanding of a fair and fact-based trial.
Furthermore, there have been numerous cases of people with threatening looks, wrongfully sentenced for years in prison without sufficient evidence of a crime. Even though some people may say that providing criminal records to juries does not make an accused person look guilty, but simply gives them more information, practice have shown that it is more likely for a jury to misinterpret this information as a clear sign of tendency to make crimes.
In conclusion, in my opinion juries should be provided with facts and evidence of the crime only. Personal information about accused information, such as criminal records can cause an emotion-based decision rather than result in a fair trial.