While developing and practically implementing the court reform, Alexander II wanted to eliminate deficiencies of the Russian system of justice such as slow handling of cases, a sophisticated court system, the disenfranchised status of the accused, and impudent bribery. The tsar-reformer declared his objectives in a slogan : “Let truth and favour reign in the courts !”

By the Decree of the Provisional Government (dated November 24,1917) – so-called Lenin’s Decree on Court, No. 1 – all judicial bodies (including the circuit courts that worked with the jurors), established by Alexander II, were eliminated. Instead, local courts represented by a judge and two lay assessors, as well as revolutionary tribunals were established.

Within the next seventy years no attempts to reintroduce trials by jury were made in the USSR. Trials by jury were criticized by Soviet scientists as being a bourgeois invention that was in contradiction with ideals of socialist legality.

In 1990 a new corpus of People’s Deputies came into power. Independence and sovereignty of the Russian Federation (RF) as well as reforms were declared. On October 24,1991, under initiative of the President of the RF, Boris N. Yeltsin, the Supreme Soviet approved the Concept of Judicial Reform. One of the major aspects of the court reform was reintroduction of trial by jury. The authors of the Concept pointed out the following advantages of trial by jury : more collective nature, unquestionable independence, lower risk of abuse and mistake. The Concept states, “... Trial by jury is a tool for solution of non-typical situations, where because of potential consequences it is more undesirable to sin against fairness rather than to violate an abstract legal regulation.”

By the Law of November 1,1991 modifications to the Constitution of the RF of 1978 were introduced. One of those modifications established a legal basis for introduction of trial by jury.

The work on preparation of regulations on jury trials and conditions for its practical implementation in Russia started in accordance with the Presidential Decree (No. 530-rp) dated September 22,1992. As in the last century a stepbystep introduction of jury trials was envisioned. First of all trials by jury were established in those regions where there was an interest as well as adequate conditions. The Heads of Stavropol Krai, Moscow, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Saratov oblasts accepted the responsibility for organization of the work of the jury trials. Later, 4 more regions (Altai and Krasnodar krai, Rostov and Ulyanovsk oblast) joined them. On July 16,1993 relevant legislation was approved by nation-wide voting, declared the right of the accused to choose jury trial in cases specified by the federal law.

According to the Law of July 16,1993, any citizen of the Russian Federation who is at least 25 years old, has no criminal record, is fully competent, and included in the electoral lists, can become a juror. Based on random selection, local administration develops a list of jurors out of electoral lists. Then administrative representatives of each particular court, using computers, randomly select from the list of jurors a number of jurors required for participation in the trials. From the candidates that show up in court based on results of questioning and drawing, a jury of 12 with two alternate jurors is formed.

All cases that the krai and oblast courts are authorized to handle fall within the jurisdiction of the jury court. Those are cases of the most serious crimes such as murder under aggravating circumstances, terrorism, grave abuse by officials, and some crimes against state power and justice. The accused whether or not he or she admits guilt may request a jury trial. Otherwise, the case will be considered by a traditional court that is composed of a judge and two People’ assessors.

At present Russian jury trials have the following specific features that were also typical for the jury trials that existed in Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century : distribution of competence between a judge and jurors; organizational separation of the jury from the professional bench, absence of reasons given for verdicts returned by juries and jurors’ legal irresponsibility for their decisions; possibility to acquit an accused who violated the criminal law if he/she is not guilty from the society’s point of view, binding nature of verdicts returned by juries. The verdicts returned by juries can be overturned by the Chamber of Cassation of the Supreme Court of the RF only in cases when legal rules of court procedure were violated or the punishment set by the judge was obviously too light.

Before the beginning of the jury trial the judge holds a preliminary hearing where motions of the parties, including motions for exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of the law are considered.

Russian trials significantly differ from trials according to the Anglo-Saxon model. First, a mixed form of legal proceedings is preserved. Investigation is carried out on an inquisitorial basis with the intermediate results being kept secret and the accused not being informed about the gathered evidence until the investigation is completed. All evidence is forwarded by the prosecutorial authorities to the court. Witnesses and experts are treated as objective sources of evidence --not being on the side of either prosecution or defense. Second, Russian legal proceedings do not consist of two separate stages, that of verdict and sentence, with a several months interruption between each other. In accordance with the Russian system the decision on punishment is made by a judge at the same proceedings, but without participation of the jurors. Third, the accused, regardless of whether he/she admits guilt has an option to choose between traditional legal proceedings with participation of People’s assessors and a jury trial. Fourth, in contrast to the rules of most U.S. jurisdictions the parting words by a judge represent summary of evidence. And fifth, the Russian jury fills in a long and complicated questionnaire. There are questions on whether the charged act and the guilt of the accused were proven and whether the accused is recommended for mercy. In case of a positive answer to the question regarding mercy, a punishment will be definitely mitigated.

In contrast to their Spanish and Austrian colleagues, Russian jurors do not give reasons for their decisions.

Provisions on jury trials contained in Section X of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RF were extended only to krai and oblast courts, though initially it was planned to introduce jury trials on lower levels of the court system such as district (municipal) courts. The judges of the first five regions mentioned have had the opportunity to apply the new provisions since September 1,1993. In four other subjects of the RF that were mentioned above the new provisions were implemented in January 1,1994.

Adversary jury trials were introduced as an alternative to Soviet legal proceedings of an inquisitorial type. To this date, two different systems of legal proceedings are functioning in Russia : adversarial, in nine courts, inquisitorial in 2000 other courts.

The first jury trial took place in Saratov oblast court on December 15-17, 1993. Since then approximately 500 cases were decided by jury trials. The ratio of verdicts of “not guilty” to verdicts of “guilty” is 1 :4 (in traditional courts the ratio of 1 :200). In 1998 the Russian jury courts handled 538 criminal cases which comprise 5% of the total number of criminal cases considered by 88 krai oblast courts and more than 30% of the total number of criminal cases considered by those nine Russian courts where the jury trials were established. In cases considered by jury courts 617 individuals were convicted while 165 were acquitted.

In spite of a relatively small share of criminal cases considered by jury courts, the reformers pinned great hopes on this form of legal proceedings. Most of these hopes were justified.

Reintroduction of trials by jury in Russia and practical implementation of its model in nine regions of the country was considered as a tool for the evolutionary replacement of Soviet legal proceedings, inquisitorial in form and a reprisal in substance, with adversary proceedings. Section X of the Code of Criminal Procedure relating to jury trials, describes the adversary proceedings and for the first time introduces the term and an article on adversariness. Along with the introduction of jury trials some evidentiary norms, which had been in force since 1961, were modified. In particular, the grounds for exclusion of illegally obtained evidence were listed. It was assumed that the parallel functioning of inquisitorial and adversary legal proceedings would provide an opportunity to train lawyers (judges, public prosecutors, counsels for the defense, legal scientists), to appreciate and accept democratic types of proceedings at their true value, and to become promoters of legal science and practice. Lawyers working in the traditional system of legal proceedings got a change to look closely at adversary proceedings, to relearn based on particular examples and to get used to a new system of justice. These results were achieved. These individuals could occupy the leading positions in the reformed system of justice based on adversary proceedings. Unfortunately, the unique experience of these individuals was not appreciated. And they themselves were unprotected from the proponents of the old school of legal thinking.

The jurors that were selected from the local population managed to oppose ordinately severe federal criminal laws (for example, on transport crimes) in spite of the fact that the public prosecutors, expressing the will of the “center”, insisted on strict observance of those laws. However, since 1996 the Supreme Court of the RF issued a number of decisions and implemented procedures that leave space for manipulations, such as reversal of “not guilty” verdicts returned by the jurors on far-fetched pretexts. Thus in 1996 temporary insanity (a circumstance that significantly mitigates legal responsibility for murder) was almost withdrawn from the jurors jurisdiction. In 1999 “an extremely liberal verdict” returned by a jury was revered only because the judge did not interrupt the accused when he spoke about tortures that he had been subjected to by the police to make him plead guilty.

As was expected, introduction of jury trials has positively influenced legal theory and practice. On the one hand, the lenience of jurors was one of the reasons for mitigation of the criminal law in 1996. On the other hand, some adversary procedures and ideas were also applied to traditional legal proceedings. For example, traditional courts started to consider motions to exclude inappropriate evidence. In some cases, interrogation protocols, where it was not recorded that the suspect or the accused were informed about their right to remain silent, were suppressed.

All practitioners and legal experts acknowledge that the preliminary investigation of criminal cases that are later forwarded to jury trials is carried out more thoroughly and with better observance of the law. Unfortunately, this fact did not improve the process of investigation of other criminal cases. Trying to avoid the rendering of “not guilty” verdicts by juries in cases where the accused was in custody, public prosecutors developed methods for withdrawal of these cases from the jurisdiction of jury trials.

It was planned to introduce jury trials in more subjects on the RF on a step by step basis. In 1995 officials from 12 more regions such as Karelia Republic; Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, and Orlov oblast; Moscow, St. Petersburg and Belgorod expressed their interest in introduction of jury trials. However, the appropriate law has not been yet approved by the State Duma.

The resolution of the Constitutional Court of the RF dated February 2,1999 recognized the right of every individual accused of a crime for which capital punishment is possible, to be tried by a jury regardless of the region. However, realization of this right was delegated to law-makers instead of law-practitioners. As a result, the constitutional right of a human being and a citizen to appear in jury trials has not been practically realized.

Though the draft of a new Code of Criminal Procedure of the RF provides for Russia-wide introduction of jury trials, the competence of jury trials will be significantly reduced. The authors of the draft recommend to modify the articles about evidence. The modifications modify the relatively strict requirements for evidence that currently exist. The jury trial is highly criticized by certain Governors (for example in Ryazan and Saratov), by mass media and representatives of law enforcement for rendering verdicts, which they think are too mild and for being overscrupulous about accusatory evidence.

Thus, the potential gained with the introduction of jury trials has not been fully realized. The risk of abolition of jury trials or misinterpretation of its judicial nature and metamorphosis of this institute into a fiction exists.