Jury Systems of the World

A jury is a group of people chosen by both the defense and the prosecution in the intent of determining the guilt of a defendant. The US and Canada are the only nations that regularly use jury's for civil cases. Great Britain uses jury's for very few civil cases while juries for civil cases in other parts of the world do not exist. Jury's first were used in Ancient Athens and consisted of up to 500 citizens for normal cases and 1,001 to 1,501 people for larger and more serious cases. In Ancient Athens jury were called dikastai. Today we have 12 people in a jury and up to 6 alternates. Today for jury selection, a large group of people are questioned on their views and beliefs before the trial in the hopes of finding an impartial jury. I think jury's are a very good idea and are important to keeping a fair legal system.

I chose Russia to research.
In Russia potential jurors must be at least 25, be legally competent and without a criminal record. The jury consists of 12 jurors like ours and they are selected from a group of 30 to 40 potential jurors. In Russia there are only about 600 cases with a jury per year out of about 1 Million trials a year. These juries must return unanimous verdicts during the first 3 hours of deliberation and majority verdicts after that, only 6 jurors are needed to acquit. Jurors may also ask the judge to show leniency in sentencing. Juries have granted acquittals in only 15 to 20 % of cases while judges only grant acquittals less than 1% of the time.Most juries not guilty verdicts are usually overturned by a higher judge.  I would definitely increase the number of juries that happen per year and i would give them more power in their verdicts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#History