The jury verdict and social needs of society

The article deals with the problem of compliance of the criminal procedure legislation regulating the procedure for the jury verdict with the demands and needs of modern society. A conclusion is made that the current reform of the jury trial has a deep meaning and importance: the increased use of this criminal procedure institution is intended to contribute to solving two major problems of a real guarantee of the constitutional right of citizens to participate in the administration of justice and of enhancement of public trust in the court, transparency and better quality of justice. The positive potential of the jury trial can be realized in full only when the public understands the consistency and predictability of jurors' decisions. At present, the public understands the meaning of decisions made by the jury trial on an intuitive level, since the verdict of the jury is not grounded. In most cases obligatory for the presiding judge, the jury verdict determines the nature and content of the sentence made on its basis. According to the legal positions of the ECHR, grounds of jury decisions should be understandable. The most important decisions of the ECHR in this area are analyzed. The question of the grounds of the jury decision is quite complex because jurors are not professionals and cannot explain their decision based on law. To require the jury to ground their own verdict seems unrealistic: amateurs will hardly cope with this task. Establishing the requirement to ground the jury verdict is possible with the participation of a professional judge presiding in the case. Various models of foreign jury trials and ways of solving the problem of the jury verdict grounding are analyzed. Countries where the jury is replaced by the national court with public participation, where professionals and amateurs form a single board do not have the problem of verdict grounding, because a single board makes a single decision, grounded to a greater or lesser extent according to national legislation. The conclusion is that the establishment of requirements to ground the jury verdict is possible with the participation of a professional judge presiding in the case. A mechanism to solve this problem is proposed: the presiding judge should follow the jury to the jury room, where the judge clarifies jurors' confusions arising from the questions, discusses their decisions, votes with them by secret ballot, grounds the decision as well as other important procedural acts. The value of the jury verdict to resolve the criminal case is undoubtedly very high, comparable to the value of the sentence. Consistency of the jury decision (absence of contradictions between the evidence collected in the case and conclusions, between the established circumstances and the decision) can be checked only if the verdict is grounded.

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