Can migrant workers face a jury of their peers?

Anbao Today (formerly Henan Legal Daily) reported last week that thirteen migrant workers have been certified as people’s jurors in Kaifeng.

The new jurors will serve on trials with particular social importance, such as those that concern the rights and interests of migrant workers. From the article:

Li Peisheng, head of the Kaifeng County court, said, “Legally bringing in migrant workers as jurors will help migrant workers be more aware of the law and democratic rights, and it will raise society’s respect for the migrant worker population. It will facilitate communication between judges and migrant workers, improve understanding of their living and working conditions, and work to concretely protect the legal interests of migrant workers.”

Guo Qinghong [a new juror] said, “I am filled with pride at being appointed a people’s juror, and at the same time I feel pressure. I will study more about the law so that I can practically protect the rights and interests of migrant workers and be a satisfactory people’s juror.”

[New juror] Wang Xijun said, “Serving as a people’s juror, I can protect the interests of my migrant worker brothers. Company bosses are also actively supporting this; it will be beneficial to resolving conflicts between businesses and employees and improving their working environment.”

So this is a good thing, right? In an op-ed for The Beijing News, Yu Zhu, a white-collar worker in Hebei, argues that migrant workers have a fundamental conflict of interest with rights-protection cases and should not serve on juries for trials of other migrant workers.

“I’m a migrant worker. To be appointed a people’s juror means that greater attention is being paid to the interests of migrant workers,” said Guo Qinghong, a farmer employed as a laborer at the Kaifeng Zheshang Wood Panel Company. Recently, Guo Qinghong and twelve other migrant workers were formally made people’s jurors by the People’s Congress of Kaifeng County, and they will take part in judging cases before the Kaifeng court involving the interests of migrant workers. The thirteen, through their own application and business recommendations, are honest and well-educated, and passed the qualifying inspection for people’s jurors.

Among the thirteen, eleven have a high-school equivalent education and two graduated from vocational colleges. Henan’s innovation to appoint migrant workers as people’s jurors to assist in protecting migrant workers’ own interests – and to have them formally commissioned by the local People’s Congress – is an innovation worthy of attention. However, the high-school and college education of the thirteen jurors brings up two other questions: what sort of quality is required in a juror? And should the jurors protecting the rights and interests of migrant workers be migrant workers themselves? I bring up this point because of what I have read concerning how jury composition and case judgment is regulated in common law countries.

Briefly, many common law countries, including the US, the selection of jurors, composition of juries, and participation in judgment mostly follows this procedure: several months before the case is formally tried, the court will arrage jury selection. Typical conditions are basically the same, for example, during three months, these jurors will be sequestered from the outside world and may not use any form of communication equipment; they may not return home and may not leak any information about the case or issue personal opinions about the case (this is basically identical to the limitations in effect for the primary judge). However, one other critical limitation is that professionals who are intimately familiar with the particular field concerned in the case may not serve as jurors.

This writer was taken aback at this: shouldn’t someone with professional knowledge – or an industry insider – be of great use in a trial? But then I found that other books told me that the courts of these countries have such strict limitations out of the followig consideration: the trial process is controlled by the judge, while cunning lawyers and prosecutors well-versed in the law go at it. So what the jury must do is simple: using their sense of conscience, justice, and social ethics, as well as the ability to judge basic facts, they determine whether the accused is guilty or not guilty, and that’s it. If a juror is well-versed in professional knowledge pertinent to a case, it is easy to fall into a trap of getting caught up in first impressions. This is not to the advantage of the accused, and it is difficult to guarantee fairness and justice.

So many countries that have a jury system carefully inspect the qualifications and personal and professional background of jurors, and only then make an acceptance or rejection. Imagine for a moment, when these originally “genuine” migrant worker jurors take part trying a case about migrant workers’ rights and interests, won’t they express mass indignation and speak in unison to support and advocate for migrant workers? And the difficulties of business owners – if they for example are harrassed and exploited by certain functionaries, or even face payroll problems when the government falls behind on its construction payments, who will listen and understand? Will the accused face unfair treatment? These are matters of grave concern.

Perhaps China, with China’s national national conditions, should not be treated as a single whole. But this writer believes that the relatively mature practices of foreign jury systems, like the challenge system, bears certain similarities to our own jury system. The restrictions placed by the courts on jurors’ qualifications and personal background have positive value, and we ought to assimilate them ourselves.