292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



instruments with whicli the skillful counsel either openly or secretly 

 works.* 



The ideal jury is unanimous. The unanimity of the real jury is, 

 in the great majority of cases of any importance, a mere name. That 

 they are required to be unanimous has been admitted from time im- 

 memorial to be a defect in the system. The absurdity of compelling 

 men to be unanimous must be apparent to the crudest intellects. In 

 olden times in England when the judges "went circuit" they used to 

 carry the jury around with them in carts until they agreed. In our 

 time we have not much advanced beyond this. We lock them up, 

 with barely the necessaries of life, until they are unanimous. The 

 value of a verdict obtained under such conditions is not very evident. 

 In an old case eight of the jury agreed to find " not guilty " and the 

 other four "would find it murder." The next morning two of the 

 four agreed with the eight. At last the rest came to this agreement, 

 viz., that they would oifer " not guilty," and if the court disliked it, 

 then they would change the verdict, and find it " guilty " ! 



The foreman pronounced "not guilty," but the court, "not liking 

 it," examined every one of them by the poll, whether that was their 

 verdict, and ten of them affirmed it, but the last two discovered the 

 whole matter ; whereupon theyioent hack and then brought in ^^ guilty." 

 The ten were all fined in considerable amounts for their conduct. It 

 is not wonderful that, recognizing, as they must do, the ineffectual 

 nature of their proceedings, jurymen have resorted to the very sim- 

 ple and suggestive expedient of casting lots for their verdict. Sev- 

 eral instances are recorded in the books of juries casting lots for it, 

 and in a recent murder trial in England it was discovered that the jury 

 had balloted for their decision. To a candid and independent observer 

 the whole effect of a jury-trial must appear about equivalent to draw- 

 ing lots. Its value as a means of discovering truth can be little if any 

 beyond this. Any one who will reflect on the matter for a moment 

 will, I think, be convinced that the proportion of correct verdicts can 

 not be much, if any, more than fifty in a hundred, which is, of course, 

 the average in every question of pure chance. Almost every jury- 

 trial is as though the parties acting in it went through a mock solem- 

 nity of greater or less duration according to the importance of the case, 

 at the conclusion of which the judge said to the jury : " We have exhib- 

 ited to you the spectacle of a trial; you will retire now, and cast dice 

 as to what your verdict will be." And if this be true, a system which 

 would dispense with the jury, and in which the court itself would throw 

 the dice, should be quite as satisfactory. It is certain that under such 

 a system the very highest degree of impartiality would be reached, 

 while there would be a vast saving in time and expense. 



* The Cincinnati riot, which occurred some time after this was written, would appear 

 to lend additional force to this observation, as it was undoubtedly to one of these causes 

 that the extraordinary verdict which led to the riot was due. 



