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By the time the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were
drafted and ratified, the institution of trial by jury was almost universally
revered. ''Those who emigrated to this country from England brought with them
this great privilege 'as their birthright and inheritance, as a part of
that admirable common law which had fenced around and interposed barriers on
every side against the approaches of arbitrary power.''' Its history has been
traced back to Magna Carta. The jury began in the form of a grand or presentment
jury with the role of inquest and was started by Frankish conquerors to discover
the King's rights. Henry II regularized this type of proceeding to establish
royal control over the machinery of justice, first in civil trials and then in
criminal trials. Trial by petit jury was not employed until the reign of
Henry III, in which the jury was first essentially a body of witnesses, called
for their knowledge of the case. Not until the reign of Henry VI did the
jury become the trier of evidence. It was during the Seventeenth Century that
the jury emerged as a safeguard for the criminally accused. Thus, in the
Eighteenth Century, Blackstone could commemorate the institution as part of a
''strong and two-fold barrier . . . between the liberties of the people and the
prerogative of the crown'' because ''the truth of every accusation . . . .
[must] be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and
neighbors indifferently chosen and superior to all suspicion.'' The right to a
jury trial was guaranteed in the constitutions of the original 13 States, and in
the body of the Constitution and in the Sixth Amendment. The constitution of
every State entering the Union thereafter protected the right to jury trial in
criminal cases.
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