A pamphlet on The American System of Trial by Jury, which has been kindly sent to us by Ex.-Gov. Chamberlain, contains some interesting statistics of the recent bribery trials in New York: -
Four trials of indicted aldermen, and one of the briber Sharp, have taken place. The whole number of days occupied by four trials and one re-trial, including Sundays, holidays, and adjournments, was 61, or about 12 each.... It is of interest also to note that in the fourth trial the whole number of jurors summoned was 324, the whole number examined, 25; while the prosecution exercised 13 of its peremptory challenges and the defence only 6; that in the fifth trial the whole number of jurors summoned was 1,5, the whole number examined, 594; the prosecution exercising 17 peremptory challenges, and the defence 2. The trial of Jacob Sharp was begun May 16, 1887, the jury was completed June 15, and the verdict of guilty was given June 29. In this trial the whole number of jurors summoned was 2,1; the whole number examined, 1,196; the prosecution exercising 15 peremptory challenges, and the defence 2. In this case 44 calendar days elapsed from the beginning to the end, and, if I am correctly advised, 31 full court days were consumed, 22 of which were occupied in selecting the jury. Thus it appears that in these five trials and one re-trial about 9 days were actually occupied; about 4,524 jurors were summoned, of whom about 2,61 were examined in order to secure 6 panels, or 72 in number, of trial jurors. Before these jurors, thus selected, four convictions were secured, - three of the bribe-taking aldermen, and the arch-briber, - while one mis-trial of an alderman occurred.
Another point deserves notice. Cases involving large mercantile or shipping transactions often arise. Such cases cannot be submitted to ordinary juries with the prospect of correct or even intelligent verdicts. To continue to require that such cases, involving questions not only of intricacy and complication, but of a nature which lies outside the experience and observation of most men, and dependent fur correct solution and decision, not on principles of common sense or common experience, but on the result of minute, varied, complicated, and involved sets or series of transactions, to be viewed not in general or loosely, but with strict reference to details, and with knowledge and appreciation of most difficult and technical questions and rules of commerce and business, - transactions, too, extending often over many years and through many changes in the personnel of the actors, -to require such cases, I say, to be submitted to ordinary juries is plainly, in my judgment, to submit to chance and accident what should pass under the scrutiny of minds fitted by some previous training or experience to treat them with intelligence. The legislation, statutory or constitutional, which shall aim to effect the change here contemplated, should, however, be most carefully guarded in its description of the excepted cases, in order not, under the guise of this reform, to narrow in other respects, to the smallest extent, the province of jury trials in the full scope which they have hitherto been given in our jurisprudence.
--Harvard Law Review, Vol. 1