Those of you who, like me, come from the Tucker/Spooner tradition of libertarian thought, might find this history of trial juries quite sobering:

Jury Trials

Most civil cases were jury trials by the reign of Edward I. These juries, which consisted of men of the community who presumably had witnessed or had knowledge of the facts, were empaneled by the sheriff to hear the pleading and render a verdict. Trial by ordeal effectively ended for criminal cases in 1215, and “neither the law nor the lawyer knew what to do about the indicted men overflowing the inadequate jails.”[65] Writs had developed for obtaining jury trials in a few criminal cases, but not for most criminal trials. For instance, an accused could obtain a write to have a jury determine whether the accuser had made changes because of malice or to determine whether an inquisitional jury had acted maliciously. These juries were called petty juries to distinguish them from the grand or inquisitional juries. This set the stage for criminal jury trials.

The prevailing opinion of the day was that trial by jury meant a guilty verdict, so there was considerable resistance to acceptance of a jury trial. The justices began to search for ways to force defendants to accept a jury trial. Some defendants were locked in a prison for a year and a day with little food and water, but still many refused the trial. In 1275, the first statue of Westminster declared that those accused of a felony who refused to accept a jury inquest would be “put in strong and hard imprisonment.” Accused felons were loaded with heavy chains and stones, placed in the worst part of the prison, given a little water one day and a little bread the next, until they agreed to trial by jury or died. Many chose to die. If found guilty in a trial, the accused would be executed and forfeit all property to the crown. Death under “hard and severe pressure” meant that he was not convicted and his property went to his family.

The composition of the petty jury gradually began to change toward the end of the thirteenth century. Rather than the same men setting as an inquisitional and petty jury, the grand jury was augmented by men randomly chosen from neighboring communities. Occasionally, such juries would even reach not-guilty verdicts. The witness-bearing character still dominated, however, and throughout the thirteenth century petty juries were groups sworn to tell what they knew about a case. The presentment jury and petty jury would not be completely separated until the mid-fourteenth century, and it would be another five hundred years before juries could be characterized as impartial.[66]

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[65] Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal History of Ancient England, p. 450.

[66] Ibid., p. 452.

Bruce Benson, The Enterprise of Law, pp. 58f.