Jury Decision Making in Rape Trials: An Attitude Problem?

Steeped in tradition and historical significance, criminal justice systems throughout the world have long considered jury trials an essential feature of a fair and just due process. Despite vast procedural variation between jurisdictions and long-established criticisms surrounding the use of lay participation within legal disputes juries continue to be utilised in some format in more than forty countries across the world (see Kaplan & Martin, 2013). Today jury trials account for just a small proportion of criminal cases that are heard before a court (approximately 1% in England and Wales), though in recent decades some countries have sought to introduce the approach within their legal systems. Japan, South Korea and Russia all now make use of lay decision makers in some way and most recently Argentina introduced jury trials for serious criminal cases (Hans, 2008; 2017)