Criminal Sociology Part 12

But the omnipotence of the jury, liberated from all reasonable regulation, with no directing motives for its verdict, and no possibility of control, is a two-edged blade, which may sometimes improve upon the law, or at least usefully indicate to the legislator the tendencies of public opinion in regard to a particular crime. But it may also violate the law, and the liberty of the individual, and then we pay too dear for the slight advantage which the jury can confer, and which might be replaced by other manifestations of public opinion. In any case, as Bentham said, it is better to have our remedy in the law than in the subversion of the law.

As for private conviction, we willingly admit that no system of legal proof is acceptable. But it is one thing to subst.i.tute for the legal and artificial a.s.surance of the law the a.s.surance of the judge who tries the case, and quite another thing to subst.i.tute for conviction founded on argument, and for a critical examination of the evidence collected during the trial, the blind and simple promptings of instinct or sentiment.

Even apart from technical notions, which we consider necessary to the physio-psychological trial of any accused person, social justice certainly cannot be dispensed through the momentary and unconsidered impressions of a casual juryman. If a criminal trial consisted of the simple declaration that a particular action was good or bad, no doubt the moral consciousness of the individual would be sufficient; but since it is a question of the value of evidence and the examination of objective and subjective facts, moral consciousness does not suffice, and everything should be submitted to the critical exercise of the intellect.

To the instinctive blindness of the judgment of juries we must add their irresponsibility.

No doubt if the legislator required from all judges a simple Yes or No, then perhaps the jury would be as good as the magistrate. But instead of the unexplained verdict which Carmignani called "the method of the cadi," we are of opinion that there should always be subst.i.tuted a sentence based on reasons and capable of control, especially in the positive system of criminal procedure, which demands from the judge an acquaintance with anthropology and criminal sociology, and from his sentence the elements necessary to the subsequent treatment of the convict, in agreement with the characteristics of his individuality and of his crime.

But not only is the jury devoid of the qualities attributed to it; it has a fatal defect, which alone is sufficient to condemn this inst.i.tution of the law.

In the first place, it is not easy to understand how a dozen jurymen, selected at hazard, can actually represent the popular conscience, which indeed frequently protests against their decisions. In any case, the fundamental conception of the jury is that the mere fact of its belonging to the people gives it the right to judge; and as the ancient a.s.semblies are no longer possible, the essence of the jury is that chance alone must decide the practical exercise of this popular prerogative.

Now these two conceptions of the jury are in manifest contradiction with the universal rule of public end private life, that social functions should be exercised by persons selected as most capable.

Thus in everyday life we all require of every labourer the work of which he is more particularly capable. No one would dream, for instance, of having his watch mended by a cobbler. The administration of criminal justice, on the contrary, is demanded of any one we chance to come across, be he grocer or man of independent means, painter or pensioner, who may never in his life have witnessed a criminal trial!

The irregularity of our statutes corresponds to the incapacity of individual jurymen; for it is evident that we cannot impose the rigorous process of a special mode of procedure on the first- comer. And the law heightens the absurdity by plainly declaring that juries must give their decision without regard to the consequences of their verdict! "Jurymen fail in their highest duty when they have regard to the penal law, and consider the consequences which their verdict may have upon the accused" (Article 342 of the French code of criminal procedure).

That is to say, criminal justice should be based on the neglect of the elementary rule of justice, according to which every man ought always to consider the possible consequences of his actions. And the criminal law demands from juries this proof of their blindness (which is fortunately impossible) that they should judge blindfold, with no regard for the prisoner, or for the consequences which their verdict may have upon him.

It was impossible that the advocates of the jury should fail to see the absurdity of these principles; and they have been compelled to slur them over, at any rate in ordinary practice.

In respect of the composition of juries, restrictions have been introduced, by means of lists of eligible persons, selection by lot, the optional exclusion of a certain number of jurymen by the public prosecutor and the defence, &c. All these expedients, however, some of which are imposed by necessity, can only insure a general and presumptive capacity, for they have the merely negative effect of contributing to exclude the most manifest moral or intellectual incapacity. But the only capacity which is necessary in a judge, which is a special and positive capacity, is not guaranteed by these restrictions, which, after all, are a negation of the very principle of the jury.

And even if the jury were always composed of persons of adequate capacity, it would still be condemned by two inevitable arguments of human psychology.

First, the a.s.sembling of several individuals of typical capacity never affords a guarantee of collective capacity, for in psychology a meeting of individuals is far from being equivalent to the aggregate of their qualities. As in chemistry the combination of two gases may give us a liquid so in psychology the a.s.sembling of individuals of good sense may give us a body void of good sense. This is a phenomenon of psychological fermentation, by which individual dispositions, the least good and wise, that is the most numerous and effective, dominate the better ones, as the rule dominates the exceptions. This explains the ancient saying, "The senators are good men, but the Senate is a mischievous animal."

And this fact of collective inferiority, not to say degeneracy, is observed in casual a.s.semblies, such as juries, meetings, and the like, far more than in organised and permanent councils of judges, experts, &c.

Secondly, the jury, even when composed of persons of average capacity, will never be able in its judicial function to follow the best rules of intellectual evolution.

Human intelligence, in fact, both individual and collective, displays these three phases of progressive development: common sense, reason, and science, which are not essentially different, but which differ greatly in the degree of their complexity. Now it is evident that a gathering of individuals of average capacity, but not technical capacity, will in its decisions only be able to follow the rules of common sense, or at most, by way of exception, the rules of reason-that is, of their common mental habits, more or less directed by a certain natural capacity. But the higher rules of science, which are still indispensable for a judgment so difficult as that which bears on crimes and criminals, will always be unknown to it.

As for the irregularity of the action of a jury, it has been deemed that this can be provided against by the formal distinction between a decision of fact and a decision of law, in obedience to the advice of Montesquieu, that "to the popular judgment we should submit a single object, a fact, a single fact."

But without dwelling on the remark of Hye-Glunek, that in this way the legal problem, which ought to be as indivisible as the syllogism which creates it, is cut into two parts, it is evident that Cambaceres was amply justified in saying, in the Council of State, that the separation of fact from law is a fallacy.

In fine, not only under the positive system of criminal procedure, which demands of the judge, in addition to legal conceptions of crime, some anthropological and sociological knowledge of criminals, but even at the present day it is more correct to say that the jury is concerned with the crime-that is, in the words of Binding, with a legal fact, and not merely a material fact; whilst the judge is concerned with the punishment. Thus, in the a.s.size Court, the separation of the judgments is not between fact and law, but only between the crime and the punishment

Even admitting the possibility of this separation of fact and law, logic and experience have already belied the a.s.sertion of those who say with Beccaria that, "for the appreciation of facts, ordinary intelligence is better than science, common sense better than the highest mental faculties, and ordinary training better than scientific."

On the contrary, a criminal trial is not only concerned with the direct perception of facts, but also and especially with their critical reconstruction and psychological appreciation. In civil law the fact is really accessory, and both sides may be agreed in its exposition, whilst disputing about the application of the law to this fact. But in criminal justice the fact is the princ.i.p.al element, and it is not merely necessary to admit or to decide upon this or that detail, but we have also to regard its causes and effects, from the individual and the social point of view, without speaking of the common difficulty of a critical and evidential appreciation of a ma.s.s of significant circ.u.mstances. So that, as Ellero said, in a criminal trial the decision as to fact is far more difficult than that as to law. And by this time daily practice has acc.u.mulated so many proofs, more or less scandalous, of the incapacity of the jury even to appreciate facts, that it is useless to dwell upon them.

To conclude this question of the jury, it remains to speak of its defects, which are not the more or less avoidable consequences of a more or less fortunate application of the principle, which might be the case with any social inst.i.tution, but, on the contrary, are an inevitable consequence of the laws of psychology and sociology.

So far as science is concerned, a fact exists in connection with a general law. For common sense, on the other hand, the actuality of the particular fact is the only matter of concern. Hence the inevitable tendency of the jury to be dominated by isolated facts, with no other guide than sentiment, which, especially in southern races, confines all pity to the criminals, whilst the crime and its victims are all but forgotten. The very keenness of sentiment which would urge the people to administer "summary justice" on the criminal, when surprised in the fact, turns entirely in his favour when he is brought up at the a.s.sizes, with downcast mien, several months after the crime. Hence we obtain an impa.s.sioned and purblind justice.

And the predominance of sentiment over the intelligence of the jury is revealed in the now incurable aspect of judicial discussions. There is no need and no use for legal and sociological studies and for technical knowledge; the only need is for oratorical persuasiveness and sentimental declamations. Thus we have heard an advocate telling a jury that, "in trials into which pa.s.sion enters, we must decide with pa.s.sion." Hence, also, the deterioration of science in the a.s.size Courts, and its faulty application, and its completely erroneous consequences.

Moreover, the verdict of the jury cannot represent the sum of spontaneous and individual convictions-not only in countries where juries are exposed to all kinds of influences during the adjournments of the discussion, but even in England, where unanimity is required, and where all communication of the jury with the outer world is forbidden until the end of the trial. For in every case the influence of the most intriguing or most respected jurymen in the jury's room is always inevitable. So that we have even had irresponsible suggestions of public deliberation on the part of the jury.

Against these defects of the jury its advocates have set an objection in regard to the trained judge, namely that the habit of judging crimes and offences irresistibly inclines the judge to look upon every prisoner as guilty, and to extinguish the presumption of innocence even in cases where it would be most justified.

This objection has really a psychological basis; for the conversion of the conscious into the unconscious, and the polarisation of the intellectual faculties and dispositions, are facts of daily observation, determined by the biological law of the economy of force. But it is not sufficient to make us prefer juries to judges.

In addition to the fact that this mental habit of judges may be counteracted by a better selection of magistrates under the reforms which I have indicated, it is to be observed that this presumption of innocence, as we have seen, is not so absolute as some would have us believe, especially in case of a trial which follows upon a series of inquiries and proofs in; the preliminary hearing.

Again, this tendency of judges is restrained and corrected by the publicity of the discussions. And all, or nearly all, the famous and oft-repeated instances of judicial errors go back to the time of the inquisitorial and secret trial-in regard to which an interesting historical problem presents itself; that is to say the co-existence of the inquisitorial trial, which impairs every individual guarantee, with the political liberties of the mediaeval Italian republics.

This is why the number of acquittals, and of the admission of extenuating circ.u.mstances, is always very remarkable, even in the Correctional Tribunals, which in Italy show proportions not greatly differing from those of the a.s.size Courts.

We must remember that, under our modern penal procedure, it is not the individual guarantees that are lacking, such as the a.s.signing of reasons for the sentence, the almost total abolition of punishments which cannot be reconsidered, appeals, reversals, revision, which would be still more efficacious under the positive system which we propose.

One logical consequence of the psychological objection raised against judges would be the granting of a jury even in the Correctional Tribunals, though the experience which we have of it in the a.s.size Courts is not so encouraging as to leave many advocates of a jury in the minor courts.

But a decisive objection, founded on the most positive data of sociology, can be raised against the jury.

The law of natural evolution proves that no variation in the vegetable or animal organism is useful or durable which is not the outcome of a slow and gradual preparation by organic forces and external conditions. Thus an organ which ceases to have a function to discharge is subject to atrophy, and no new organ is possible or capable of development if it is not required by a new function to which it corresponds.

What has been said of organic variations is also true of social inst.i.tutions. And when the jury is contemplated from this point of view, we see that it has been artificially grafted by a stroke of the legislator's pen on the judicial inst.i.tutions of the continent, without the long-continued, spontaneous and organic connections which it had, for instance, with the English people. The jury had even disappeared from the continental countries in which it had left traces of former existence; for it had not found in the race-characteristics or the social organism that favourable environment which is supplied in England by the natural groundwork of inst.i.tutions and principles which, as Mittermaier says, are its necessary correlative.

The jury, as it has been politically established on the continent of Europe, is what Spencer calls a false membrane in the social organism, having no physiological connection with the rest of the body politic. So that it is not yet acclimatised, even in France, after a century of uninterrupted trial.[18]

[18] The actual state of the law in Europe, so far as regards the jury for common crimes and offences, is as follows:-England, Scotland, Ireland, and Switzerland have the jury for a.s.sizes and courts of first instance. France, Italy, Cisleithan Austria, Istria, Dalmatia, Rhenish Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, Bavaria, Bohemia, Gallicia, Belgium, Roumania, Greece, Portugal, Russia, and Malta, have the criminal jury only. Spain had suspended it, but restored it in 1888. Prussia, Saxony, Baden, Wurtemberg, have the criminal jury and echevins (bodies of citizens sitting with the judges) for correctional and police cases. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, have the echevins. Holland, Norway, Hungary, Slavonia, Poland, Servia, and Turkey, have neither juries nor echevins.

As for the other bio-sociological law, of single organs for single functions, it seems to me that if in England the jury and the magistracy have been developed side by side and interwoven, this is only a case of organic integration. But on the continent, as the jury has been added artificially to the magistracy, this is on the other hand a genuine example of non-natural growth.

And if it be said that the jury, as an advance from the h.o.m.ogeneous to the heterogeneous, indicates a higher degree of social evolution, we must draw a distinction between differentiations which amount to evolution and those which, on the contrary, are symptoms of dissolution. Division of labour, physiological or social, is a true evolutionary differentiation; whilst modifications introduced by a disease in the animal organism, or by a revolt in the social organism, are but the beginning of a more or less extended dissolution.

Now the jury belongs to the domain of social pathology, for it is essentially contrary to the law of the specialisation of functions, according to which every organ which becomes more adapted to a given task is no longer adapted to any other. It is only in the lower organisms that the same tissue or organ can perform different functions, whilst in the vertebrates the stomach can only serve for digestion, the lungs for oxygenation, and so on. Similarly in primitive societies, each individual is soldier, hunter, tiller of the soil, &c., whilst with the progress of social evolution every man performs his special function, and becomes unfitted for other labours. In the jury we have a return to the primitive confusion of social functions, by giving to any chance comer, who may be an excellent labourer, or artist, a very delicate judicial function, for which he has no capacity to-day, and will have no available experience to-morrow.

In modern societies, to tell the truth, there is another function a.s.signed to all citizens, outside of their special capacity, and that is the electoral duty. But the cases are very different. The franchise does not demand a labour so difficult and delicate as critical judgment, and the reconstruction of the conditions of an act and of its author. It has no direct influence on the positive function of the person elected, but on the contrary it is a confession of the special incapacity of the elector to do what he intrusts to the capacity of the person elected. The franchise is but an elementary function of the a.s.similation of physiological elements in the social organism, which in the animal organism is performed by the aggregate of living cells, and in society by the aggregate of individuals, not being idiots or criminals, who possess the minimum of social energy.

Far different is the administration of criminal justice, a technical and very n.o.ble function, which has nothing in common with the elementary function of the franchise. I could not indeed agree with the a.s.sertion of Carrara, who thought it a contradiction to deny to the people any partic.i.p.ation in the exercise of the judicial authority when they are allowed to partic.i.p.ate in the exercise of legislative authority. In the first place, the people have but a very indirect share in the legislative function, and, even where the referendum exists, very useful as I believe it to be, the people have only a simple, almost negative function, to say Yes or No to a law which they have not made, and would have had no technical ability to make. Thus the argument of Carrara could only lead to the popular election of judges, as of legislators, and to a control by the people of the administrative action of the judges when elected No doubt this would have theoretical advantages, though in my opinion it would raise practical difficulties, especially in nations which do not possess a very keen conscience and political activity, after enfeeblement by centuries of despotism, or of political and administrative tutelage and centralisation.

The jury, then, is a retrogressive inst.i.tution, as shown by history and sociology, for it represents the mediaeval and instinctive phase of criminal justice. It has, indeed, a few advantages (there is always a certain profit in misfortune), especially when it operates on the final outcome of the cla.s.sical theories-bringing to bear, for instance, an irresistible force against repeated theft, or murders committed at the instigation of others. And it has sometimes drawn attention to necessary penal reforms, after accepting certain conclusions of the positive school, such as the acquittal of criminals of pa.s.sion, and political prisoners, or a greater severity towards habitual criminals.

But the only possible conclusion from the foregoing criticisms is that the jury should be abolished for the trial of common crimes, AFTER the introduction of reforms which would ensure the capacity and independence of the judges.

Meanwhile, since it is much easier to establish a new social inst.i.tution than to abolish one, it is worth while to indicate the princ.i.p.al and most urgent reforms which should be made in the jury system, so as to eliminate its more serious and frequent disadvantages.

The theoretical distinction of the cla.s.sical school between ordinary and political crimes is not very precise, for the so- called political crimes are either not crimes (as when they are confined to the manifestation of an idea), or they are common crimes which spring from a lofty and social pa.s.sion in individuals, who have the characteristics of the criminal by pa.s.sion, or, in other words,-are but quasi-criminals; or else they are common crimes committed by ordinary malefactors, under the pretext of a popular idea. Instead of distinguishing crimes, I think we ought to distinguish between ordinary and political criminals, according to their determining motives, and the social bearings and historical moment of their acts. At the same time, whilst our criminal laws retain this distinction, I think it is useful to keep the jury for the trial of political crimes and offences, and for those connected with the press and with society as a whole; for if in these cases the jury might yield to the influence of cla.s.s interests and prejudices (as for instance in the trial of actions arising out of the conflict of capital and labour), the danger will still be less than it would be with judges alone, who are not sufficiently independent of the executive, which in its turn is but the secular arm of the dominant cla.s.s, and which therefore combines the interests and prejudices of the political order with those of the economic and moral order which dominate the jury.

For common crimes it would be necessary to withhold from a jury the trial of prisoners who avow their crime. The essence of a trial by indictment is the principle that the discussion as to punishment is a private affair, and it has no further ground for existence when one of the parties withdraws from the duel. Hence the English mistrust of a prisoner's confession of guilt, which in the inquisitorial trial, on the other hand, is a mainstay of the evidence. Yet I believe that in these cases the Scottish system is preferable to the English. In England the judge begins by asking the prisoner if he is Guilty or Not Guilty, and in case of a confession he pa.s.ses sentence without a verdict from the jury. In Scotland, on the contrary, the prosecutor can furnish his proof, in spite of the confession of the prisoner, and demand a verdict from the jury. In this way it is possible to avoid not only a scandalous acquittal of prisoners who have confessed their guilt (as happens in Italy, France, and elsewhere), but also the danger that the confession may not be true, and that an innocent man may be condemned.

Juries ought, moreover, as proposed by M. Ellero, to specify attenuating circ.u.mstances, on each of which a special question ought to be put to them.