Lawmakers suggest clarifying duty of jurors in courts

Chinese lawmakers on Wednesday welcomed the increasing presence of jurors in courts while strongly calling for a clear legal definition of their duties.

Members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, met to discuss a report on the juror system delivered by Chief Justice Zhou Qiang on Tuesday at an ongoing bi-monthly session.

In Chinese courts, a juror exercises the same power in hearing and deciding cases as a judge but cannot hear a case alone or act as chief judge of a collegial panel. Jurors form at least one third of a collegial panel.

Jurors are ordinary citizens over 23 years of age who do not necessarily have legal training and perform juror duties part-time.

Although several laws have been written about jurors, the current system is mainly based on a motion adopted by the NPC Standing Committee in 2004.

Since then, Chinese courts have seen an increasing presence of jurors.

According to Zhou's report, jurors took part in 71.7 percent of first trials in China in the first seven months of the year. The proportion last year was 62.9 percent, a notable increase from 19.7 percent in 2006.

"We should have a clear regulation about what kinds of court cases require the presence of jurors," said Wan Exiang, NPC Standing Committee member and former vice president of the Supreme People's Court.

Wan suggested that high-profile and controversial cases will need jurors so as to increase transparency and credibility of the trial.

He also held that defendants and plaintiffs should also be entitled to decide whether their cases require jurors.

Jurors were included in several high-profile trials this year, such as that of Zhou Xijun, who was sentenced to death in May for strangling an infant he found in the back seat of a SUV that he had stolen in Changchun, capital city of northeast China's Jilin Province.

China has about 87,000 jurors, 55 percent more than in 2006, which is equal to half the number of judges in local courts.

Zhu Zhengxi, an NPC deputy and judge of a township court in central China's Henan Province, viewed the role of jurors differently than Wan.

"In my experience, jurors play an irreplaceable role in trials in small civil cases, especially those between couples, relatives and neighbors," said Zhu, who works at a court that covers four rural townships of 150,000 residents.

Since jurors are mostly respected people in local communities, they can mediate and settle disputes more easily than judges who are strangers to both parties, she said.

"Most of our cases involve farmers who are not willing to hire lawyers. They usually end through a settlement outside the court through mediation, in which jurors are very helpful," she added.

A number of lawmakers suggested that jurors be sorted into different groups and work on cases that fit their specialties.

According to Zhou's report, the Supreme People's Court plans to increase the pool of jurors to 200,000 in the next two or three years and raise the number of jurors who are "grassroots" ordinary citizens to a minimum of two thirds of the total.

Liu Binjie, an NPC Standing Committee member, held that the law should introduce detailed regulations on how to select jurors.

The current law stipulates that juror candidates can be recommended by the government and other organizations, while individual citizens can also apply to be jurors.

The list of candidates will be examined by local courts and judicial departments and decided on by the president of a local court before being submitted to the local people's congress for appointment.

"Now a majority of jurors are recommended. We should expand the channel for individual citizens to apply for this duty so jurors will be more self-motivated and the representation of jurors will be broader," Liu said.

He also called for implementation of random selection of jurors, saying that many local judges are inclined to pick jurors from the pool.