Russia’s Supreme Court proposes cutting juries to four members and allowing judges into jury deliberations

Russia’s Supreme Court has drafted a plan to reform jury trials, according to RBC, Kommersant, and Vedomosti.

The proposal would create a panel comprising both jurors and a professional judge. The judge could join the jurors in the deliberation room to clarify issues that arise during voting.

Supreme Court Judge Sergei Zelenin said this would “considerably streamline the proceedings” and reduce the time needed to hear cases.

The proposal would also reduce the number of jurors to four. Until 2018, juries had 12 members. They now have eight members in regional courts and six in district courts and garrison military courts.

The plan would also allow people over 65 to serve as jurors if they are willing and healthy enough. It would simplify jury selection, particularly by ending the practice of disbanding a jury panel deemed incapable of producing an objective verdict.

Zelenin, who presented the proposal, said the current model was an artificial import from the Anglo-American system. “The separation of jurors and the professional judge, including the division of their powers, is primarily a feature of the Anglo-Saxon legal system and alien to the continental tradition,” he said.

Defendants may request a jury trial during court proceedings. RBC says juries most often hear cases involving murder, intentional infliction of serious bodily injury resulting in death through negligence, and armed gang activity.

Researchers at the Institute for the Rule of Law have repeatedly said the acquittal rate in jury trials is roughly 10 times as high as in nonjury trials, where it is below 1%.