The Meaning and Evolution of Criminal Jury Trials in the U.S. Constitution : In Relation to the Citizen Participation Trial in South Korea

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees all criminal defendants the right to a jury trial. According to the text of the Sixth Amendment, all criminal cases must be adjudicated through a jury trial. When the framers of the U.S. Constitution drafted the Sixth Amendment, they envisioned jury trials as a simplified procedure, believing it was feasible to conduct all criminal cases through jury trials. However, as evidentiary rules were refined and the adversarial criminal procedure system was established, jury trials became proceedings that require significant material and human resources, as well as considerable time. If all criminal cases were conducted through jury trials, the criminal justice system would inevitably become paralyzed. In response to this situation, the United States processes most criminal cases through plea bargaining, and in reality, fewer than 5% of all criminal cases go to a jury trial. Plea bargaining serves to prevent the disruption of the criminal justice system that could result from requiring all criminal cases to be tried by a jury under the Sixth Amendment. In South Korea, the Korean-style jury trial system, known as the People’s Participation Trial(국민참여재판), has been in place since 2008. There have been discussions about eliminating restrictions on the scope of cases eligible for jury trials and granting binding force to jury verdicts. However, as seen in the historical development of the U.S. jury trial system, conducting all criminal cases through jury trials is nearly impossible due to limitations in human and material resources and time constraints. Therefore, it is necessary to impose reasonable restrictions on the types of cases subject to People’s Participation Trials in South Korea. Regarding the binding force of jury verdicts, it would also be reasonable to impose limitations, such as recognizing binding force only when the verdict is unanimous. The issue of introducing plea bargaining in South Korea should also be evaluated in consideration of the differences between the U.S. and South Korean legal systems. In South Korea, jury trials are not constitutionally guaranteed for all criminal cases, and there is no urgent need to limit the number of cases going to trial through mechanisms such as plea bargaining to prevent system overload. Unlike the United States, plea bargaining is not essential to the South Korean criminal justice system. Given the various issues inherent in plea bargaining, there is no necessity for South Korea to adopt the U.S.-style plea bargaining system within its legal framework.