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Draft   to   enact   procedure  
CT.05   ---   Jury   System   in   Lower   Court









DRAFT-1 (citizens need to pass this draft in the Parliament)

Emopwering States to decide procedure code for Lower Courts

  1. The State Assembly, after passing a resolution, can request transfer of power to change the procedure code for Lower Courts, including rules of appointment of Judges and Citizen Jurors in the Lower Courts.

  2. The Assembly must pass the resolution with DIRECT YESes from over 33% of voters of the State, not merely the YESes of MLAs.

-------------------------------- End of DRAFT-1 --------------------------------

  DRAFT-2 (citizens need to pass this draft in the State Assembly)

Jury System in Lower Courts
 
Jury System in Lower Courts --- Section   1   :   Preamble
  This Act is to create a less nexusprone procedure for citizens by which citizens can decide if an employee of municipality needs to be fined/expelled or not.

Section   2   : Format of the act
2.1 Many of the clauses of this law are procedures or instructions, which may be an order or a request. The clause has list of persons for whom that procedure/instruction is meant for.

Section   3   : Appointments of senior officers and their main powers
3.1 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: CM ; Purpose: Appointment of senior officers] Within 2 days after passing this law, the CM will appoint 1 Registrar for entire State and 1 JA (i.e. Jury Administrator) per District.

Section   4   : Procedure for citizens to replace Jury Administrator
4.1 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: Registrar, Registrar’s clerks] A citizen residing in a District can present his ID and specify the serial numbers of (at most 5) candidates he Approves for the position of Jury Administrator in his District. The clerk will enter the requests in the systems and give the receipt to the citizen. The citizen to change his choices any day any month.
4.2 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: Registrar] The clerk may charge a fee of Rs 2 to Rs 5 to the citizen.
4.3 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: Registrar] The citizen can withdraw his Approvals any day. There will be no fee from withdrawing the Approvals.
4.4 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: CM ; Purpose: Replacement of Jury Administrator] If any candidate is approved by highest number of citizen-voters and over 25% of ALL citizen-voters, the CM will appoint him as new JA for that District within 2 days. If any candidate is approved by over 25% of ALL citizen-voters and his approval is 1% more than existing JA, the CM will appoint him as new JA within 2 days. The CM will not remove JA, previously approved by citizens, unless Approval goes below 20% of ALL citizens.
4.5 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: Registrar; Purpose: allowing a citizen to be candidate for JA] Any citizen of India who wants citizens’ Approval for the position of JA can register himself with the Registrar. The Registrar will charge a deposit of Rs 2000 and a monthly fee Rs 100 per month. There will be no fee after over 5% of ALL citizens have approved the candidate.
4.6 [Person responsible for this procedure/directive: Registrar ; ] Word "citizen" in the context of Approval, means citizen above 18 and registered voter resident in the city

Section   5   : Formation of Grand Jury

[ similar to section5 of "Jury System over Municipality Staff" Act]

Section   6   : Meetings of Grand Jurors and compensation

[ same as section6 of "Jury System over Municipality Staff" Act]

Section   7: Admitting a trial against a citizen

7.1 [Procedure for Citizens] If any person, be a private person or District Prosecutor, has complaint against any other person, he can write to all or some Grand Jurors. The complainer must specify the remedy he wishes. The remedy can be
  • obtaining possession of a property
  • obtaining monetary compensation from the accused
  • imprisoning the accused for certain number of years/months.
If over 15 Grand Jurors, in a meeting, issue an invitation, the citizen may appear. The Grand Jurors may or may not invite the aJudgeused.

7.2 [Procedure for JA] If over 15 Grand Jurors declare that there is some merit in the complaint, the JA will call a JURY consisting of 12 citizens from the district to examine the complaint. The JA will select more than 12 citizens randomly, and send them summons to them, and of those who arrive, the JA will select 12 at random.

7.3 [Procedure for JA] JA will ask the Chief District Judge to appoint one or more Judges to preside over the case. If the property in dispute is worth above Rs 25lakhs or compensation claim is above Rs 100,000 and/or the maximum prison sentence is above 12 months, the JA will request Chief Judge to appoint 3 judges or else he will request Chief Judge to appoint 3 Judges for the case. The Chief Judge's decision on appointing number of Judges in the case will be final. The Judges and the Chief Judge may be elected by the citizenry or appointed by Ministers, MLAs or High Court Judges as per the procedures decided by the Assembly.

7.4 [Procedure for Judge] The trial will go from 11am to 4pm. The trial will start only after all 12 Jurors and the complainer have arrived. If any party has not arrived, the parties who have arrived must wait till 4pm and then only they can go home.

7.5 [Procedure for Judge] The Judge will allow the complainer to speak for 1 hour, during which no can interrupt. Then Judge will allow the employee to speak for 1 hour during which no one can interrupt. Like this, the Judge will alternate case. The case will go on like this on every day.
7.6 [Procedure for Judge] The case will go for at least 2 days. On the 3rd or later, if over 7 Jurors declare that they have heard enough, the case will go on for 1 more day. If on the next day, over 7 out of 12 Jurors declare that they would like to hear more arguments, the case will go on till over 7 say that case should end.

7.7 [Procedure for Judge] On the last day, after both parties have presented the case for 1 hour each, the Jurors will deliberate for at least 2 hours. If after 2 hours, over 7 Jurors say that they need no more deliberation, the Judge will ask each to declare his verdict.

7.8 [Procedure for Judge, Grand Jurors] In case a Juror or a party does not show up or shows up late, the Grand Jurors after 3 months will decide the fine.


Section 8 : Deciding the punishments

8.1 [Procedure for District Police Chief]
  1. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors declare that the property in dispute should be given to complainer, the District Police Chief or the officer he delegates, using policemen or otherwise, ensure that the complainer get the possession over the property.
  2. In case of fine, each Juror will state the fine he thinks is appropriate, and MUST be less than 50% of wealth the accused owns. The Judge will arrange the fine amounts stated in increasing order, and take the 3rd highest fine, i.e. fine that is approved by over 8 out of 12 Jurors, as the fine collectelively imposed by the Jury.
  3. In case of prison sentense, the Judge will arrange the sentense lengths, which must be below the maximum sentence as stated in the Law accused is charged with breaking, in increaseing order. And the judge will take the 3rd highest sentence i.e. prison sentense approved by over 8 out 12 Jurors, as the prison sentense collectively decided by the Jury.
The District Police Chief will carry out the above instruction as given the Jury and drafted by the Judge.
8.2 [Procedure for District Police Chief] If 4 or more Jurors do NOT ask for any confiscation or fine or prison sentence, the Judge will declare the accused as innocent and the District Police Chief will take no action against him.

8.3 [Procedure for accused, complainer] Eighter party will have 30 days to appeal against the verdict in before the State's High Court or the Supreme Court of India.


Section 9 : Protection of a citizen

9.1 [Instructions of ALL employees of District, State and Central Govt] No Govt employee will impose any fine or prison sentence without consent of over 8 out of 12 Jurors of the Lower Courts, unless approved by the Jurors of High Courts or the Jurors or Supreme Court. No Govt employee will imprison any citizen for more than 24 hours without approval of over 15 out 30 District or State Grand Jurors.


Section   10   : Other Details
10.1 The rupee amount used in this text uses July-2000 price levels. The standing committee can adjust the amounts every six months using RBI’s Inflation Index.
10.2 If the officer does not execute a procedure or ignores an instruction stated in this Resolution/Act, a citizen can file a complaint before the Grand Jurors. In case there are is no Grand Jury, the citizens can appeal to the CM to setup a Grand Jury. But under this law, a citizen cannot complaint before CM, Corporators, CM, MLAs, PM, or MPs.
10.3 The Jurors will judge this Act, guidelines, intentions as well as the facts related to the case


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