JURY TRIALS WILL RETURN TO GEORGIA AFTER NEARLY 100 YEARS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 TBILISI 002576 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR INL/AAE, EUR/ACE, EUR/CAC DOJ FOR OPDAT (LEHMANN/NEWCOMBE) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: SNAR PGOV OTRA KCRM KJUS GG SUBJECT: JURY TRIALS WILL RETURN TO GEORGIA AFTER NEARLY 100 YEARS ¶1. Summary: For the first time since the 1920's, jury trials will return to Georgia. On October 6, 2007, prosecutors from the Office of Public Prosecution (OPP) and ABA/ROLI-trained defense lawyers conducted mock jury trials before juries composed of Georgian law students. Attorneys questioned the jurors and exercised motions using various new Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) provisions to exclude evidence while trying a bank robbery case to conclusion, including obtaining jury verdicts. The new CPC - - which is expected to undergo and pass its all-important second reading this month - - introduces jury trials, as a pilot project, for the crime of first degree murder committed in Tbilisi, Georgia. To assist Georgia with this monumental shift from a Soviet-style inquisitorial system that makes no provision for jury trials to an in-court adversarial system in which citizen jurors are charged with deciding guilt or innocence in serious criminal cases, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (DOJ/OPDAT) and the Government of Georgia (GOG) conducted a series of roundtables and trial skills seminars to teach the prosecutors how to conduct jury trials. On October 6, armed with the new CPC's chapter on jury trials, including draft jury instructions, and their newly-acquired trial advocacy skills, Georgian attorneys and jurors braved the new world of jury trials. End Summary. -------------- Something is Rotten in the State of Georgia -------------- ¶2. During Georgia's short-lived independence between 1918 and 1921, jury trials allowed citizens to actively participate in determining a fellow citizen's guilt or innocence. However, when the Soviets occupied Georgia in 1921, they abolished jury trials. Effectively, this eliminated the public's active participation in the criminal procedure process. Regular citizens no longer judged fellow citizens based on the evidence presented in court. Instead, judges rendered decisions based on evidence law enforcement officials and prosecutors gathered from witnesses in offices outside the public's view and evidence presented in court. This process afforded the public little to no opportunity to view the witnesses while they provided the facts, observe the inquisitorial process, or analyze 
the complete dossier. At most, the public passively sat in the courtroom while the court conducted the trial and rendered its decision. -------------- -------------- Good Night, Good Night! Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow -------------- -------------- ¶3. After nearly 100 years, Georgia bids adieu to the inquisitorial system and will revive jury trials. Initially, the CPC will afford defendants charged with committing first degree murder in Tbilisi with the right to be judged by their peers. This means that average Georgian citizens will no longer play a passive role in the distribution of justice. Instead, Georgian citizens will, quite literally, have in their own hands, the power to convict or acquit a defendant. ¶4. The new CPC will shift the prosecution's focus from the dossier gathering process favored in the Soviet-style inquisitorial system to an in-court adversarial system in which the finder of fact, whether it is a jury or judge, evaluates witness testimony and other evidence presented and examined before them in court. Shifting the focus away from the pre-trial process to the in-court adversarial trial opens the criminal justice process to the public and gives the public an ability to see the wheels of justice firsthand. Further, giving Georgian citizens a direct and active role in the criminal justice system via their participation as jurors permits the public to hold the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense counsel accountable for their actions. As jurors, the public will determine which witnesses and other pieces of evidence to believe and decide which arguments are persuasive. Moreover, as jurors, the public will no longer be limited to protesting perceived miscarriages of justice after the fact. Instead, they have the authority to acquit a defendant if they believe that the government unfairly charged him or failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (or, as it is known in Georgia "body of doubtless evidence"). Opening the criminal justice system up to the public and including them in the resolution of criminal disputes in jury trials will only serve to increase the Georgian public's faith in the Rule of Law because the public will now, as jurors, be an important part of the decision-making process. As stakeholders in the justice process, Georgian citizens will hold the power to curb injustice and ensure fairness and objectivity in criminal proceedings through their participation in the criminal trial. In fact, Georgian Chief Justice Konstantine Kublashvili has highlighted jury trials as one of the most significant tools available to increase the public's trust in the judiciary. TBILISI 00002576 002 OF 004 -------------- We Are Such Stuff . . . As Dreams Are Made On -------------- ¶5. In support of the new jury trial concept, OPDAT and the GOG engaged in a series of ad hoc meetings conducted by the Georgian Parliament's Legal Committee that culminated in a CPC Summit in May which helped the Georgians focus on the jury implementation issues that needed to be addressed in the CPC and other Georgian legislation. Summit participants investigated how other countries, which had successfully adopted in-court adversarial systems, implemented jury trials. Georgian officials, including the Legal Committee Chairman and Deputy Chairman, other Members of Parliament, Georgia's Prosecutor General, NGOs interested in criminal procedure reform, probed the foreign experts, including US experts RLA Roger Keller and ABA/ROLI Criminal Law Liaison Matthew Reger, as well as UK Law Professor and comparative criminal procedure law expert Richard Vogler (Sussex University, U.K.),to better understand how other countries resolve issues encountered in such a historic shift. ¶6. Georgian decision-makers, with assistance from these foreign experts, discussed a variety of ways to include the public, through jury trials, in the criminal justice process. For example, they considered the jury's role in evaluating live, in-court testimony. Would the jury be allowed to directly ask questions or would they be required to ask their questions through the judge? They considered permitting jury trials only for those cases in which life imprisonment was the potential punishment. Many countries introducing a jury trial system have initially limited jury trials to cases in which the potential punishment is life in prison. However, the Georgians found this approach unworkable because more than 500 currently pending cases involve this potential punishment. The Georgians expressed concern that this would be too many cases for an effective pilot project aimed at ironing out implementation kinks before expanding the juror system to cover other crimes and to the rest of Georgia. Alternatively, they suggested jury trials for fraud cases. Significantly fewer fraud cases than murder cases are pending in Georgia. However, they ultimately rejected this proposal as well because they considered fraud cases to be too complicated for a jury to understand. The Georgians also considered implementing a jury pilot project. A jury would be convened in some regions, but not others. This would reduce the number of cases in which a jury trial could be permitted. However, the Georgians expressed Constitutional concerns with this proposal because it would, in a discriminatory fashion, provide jury trials for individuals based solely on their location. Ultimately, the Georgian decision-makers could not agree on an exact mechanism for implementing jury trials. Nevertheless, the Summit participants resolved that the CPC would revive jury trials in Georgia. ¶7. The Georgians finally resolved the jury trial issue in a series of ad hoc meetings held throughout the summer. They determined to provide defendants charged with first degree murder committed in Tbilisi the right to a jury trial. This compromise addressed many of the issues raised at the CPC Summit. First, it will not overburden the nascent jury trial system because a minimum number of these crimes have been committed. For example, less than 30 first degree murder cases are currently docketed in the Tbilisi City Court. However, there are a sufficient number of first degree murder charges to allow a large number of citizens to participate as jurors. Second, first degree murder is relatively straight forward and does not unnecessarily complicate a juror's new duties. Jurors will need to simply listen to and evaluate the credibility of the evidence and decide whether the defendant is guilty or innocent. Crimes, such as fraud, were not included because the drafters felt that it would be too difficult, initially, for the jurors to grasp the nuances associated with a fraud case in addition to handling their new juror duties. Finally, the Georgian experts determined that limiting jury trials to Tbilisi does not present Constitutional concerns. Although the Georgian Constitution provides a defendant with the right to a trial, it does not guarantee him the right to a trial by jury. -------------- All the World's a Stage, And All the Men and Women Merely Players -------------- ¶8. The GOG, OPDAT, and ABA/ROLI quickly recognized that the adoption of a new jury trial provision without practical skills training for current practitioners would render this new legislation meaningless and, worse, serve to increase public doubt in or opposition to this new, democratic concept. OPDAT and ABA/ROLI, individually, trained more than 600 prosecutors and 204 defense lawyers from throughout Georgia how to adapt their newly learned in-court adversarial skills to jury trials. During the OPDAT-sponsored seminar in October, prosecutors learned that every person is not necessarily an appropriate juror for every case. Individual bias, strongly held TBILISI 00002576 003 OF 004 beliefs or opinions, or a general world outlook might disqualify a person from sitting as a juror in a particular case if it prevents him or her from being objective. The prosecutors learned how to adapt their previously learned trial advocacy skills to jury selection or, in legal parlance, voir dire. For example, they learned how to use open ended, non-leading questions - - such as "how do you feel" or "what do you think" - - to invite jurors to openly and honestly discuss beliefs and opinions that might render them unable to fairly listen to the facts and decide the case based on its merits. Additionally, the prosecutors learned how to use their cross-examination skills to disqualify jurors "for cause." For example, a potential juror might admit that he holds specific beliefs that he could not disregard regardless of how the judge instructs. This provides the prosecutors with the basis to strike a potential juror for cause. Finally, prosecutors also learned the ground rules for exercising peremptory strikes. Peremptory strikes allow prosecutors to strike a potential juror for any reason, except for illegal reasons (i.e., race and gender) listed in the CPC. The prosecutors learned these "illegal" justifications and also how to strategically use their peremptory strikes. For example, they learned that the CPC envisions only seating the first 14 juror candidates. This means that the prosecutors should focus their strikes on potential jurors, and not those who will not potentially be included in the jury. ¶9. Prior to the moot jury trials, 30 prosecutors divided into two groups of 15 and practiced their newly found voir dire skills. While a prosecutor practiced her voir dire skills, other prosecutors pretended to be ordinary citizens with the usual life experiences. For example, one potential juror explained that he did not trust the police because they treated his brother unfairly in a previous case. Another one disagreed, stating that the police helped his sister in a traumatic case. Likewise, the juror candidates explained why they trusted or distrusted cooperating witnesses. One juror mentioned that a cooperating witness will simply lie to get a better deal from the government while another juror said that cooperating witnesses should be trusted because they do not want to be the only person to go to jail when a group of people committed the crime. In short, the voir dire practice forced the prosecutors to deal with responses typically given during the voir dire process in countries with a jury trial system. -------------- -------------- Come, Let's Away to Prison; We Two Alone Will Sing -------------- -------------- ¶10. On October 6, the prosecutors and the ABA/ROLI trained defense lawyers tested the trial provisions in mock jury trials. Juries, consisting of 7 law students, listened to 7 jury trials about a bank robbery. For the most part, the juries and the judges believed that the prosecutors were more prepared and technically better in presenting their cases. However, 6 of the 7 juries acquitted the defendant. The jurors believed that the government provided insufficient evidence to convict the defendants (in part, a function of the time limits imposed on the parties). For example, the jurors wanted to see the bank robbery video to judge the defendant's actions for themselves. Additionally, they wanted to hear from the victims in the bank as to what they felt and believed during the bank robbery. These are all criticisms that Georgian citizens currently level against the government in cases tried under the current Soviet-style system. In this instance, however, rather than simply protesting the absence of incriminating evidence, the citizen-jurors took charge and acquitted the defendant. This demonstrated to the prosecution in a very compelling and concrete manner, the need to publicly produce all incriminating evidence. This is not required in the current system in which the government does not produce evidence publicly but simply submits it to the court for its consideration. ¶11. The composition of the juries was also significant. In the 6 cases in which the law students acquitted the defendant, they admitted that they analyzed the evidence as lawyers rather than as lay persons. By contrast, in the single case in which the defendant was convicted, the jurors admitted that they purposely avoided using their legal training to analyze the evidence. The CPC prohibits lawyers from participating as jurors in a trial. Some of the law student jurors argued that this is unfair because their legal training would assist a jury in resolving a dispute. Other participants agreed that excluding lawyers was appropriate because jurors might erroneously follow the lawyers simply because they had legal training, not because they listened to the testimony or followed the judge's instructions better. Most importantly, for the prosecutors, a jury composed of law students taught them the importance of perfecting their voir dire skills. In addition to presenting a better technical case, the prosecutors learned that sometimes the wrong jury composition results in an acquittal. They will perfect these skills, but it will take time and practice - - just as it does for all lawyers trying jury cases everywhere. TBILISI 00002576 004 OF 004 ¶12. Comment: Reviving jury trials in Georgia after nearly 100 years will increase public participation in the criminal justice process and thereby significantly augment not only transparency within the justice sector but also the accountability of Georgian legal and law enforcement professionals. As criminal justice participants, Georgian jurors will have the power to protect fellow citizens from governmental abuses of power rather than simply protesting them after the fact. Empowering members of the public to protect fellow citizens should, in turn, significantly enhance Georgians' faith in the Rule of Law and democracy because now - - as jurors - - they will be able to safeguard the law's application. Indeed, the law student jurors immediately recognized this important fact. After the mock jury trial, they commented that the jury trial system will tangibly reinforce within Georgian society the belief that the judicial system is not biased and that citizens receive fair trials. End Comment. TEFFT