Jurors

* It is plain that the juries, in these courts, must, of necessity, have been the sole judges of all matters of law whatsoever;

It is perfectly evident that in all these courts the jurors were the judges, and determined all questions of law for themselves;

It is manifest from all the accounts we have of the courts in which juries sat, prior to Magna Carta, such as the court-baron, the hundred court, the court-leet, and the county court, that they were mere courts of conscience, and that the juries were the judges, deciding causes according to their own notions of equity, and not according to any laws of the king, unless they thought them just.

This is why the lawgiver placed first in the jurors’ oath these words, I will vote according to the laws.

For the jurors were ashamed, I imagine, to see the same man in the same city one day proclaimed at the festival as crowned by the people with a golden crown because of his virtue and justice, and then a little later to see the same man come out of the auditors’ court convicted of theft.

And if the gods permit, and the jurors give us an impartial hearing, and I am able to call to mind all that I know about you, I confidently expect to show to the jury that for the safety of the city it is the gods who are responsible, and the men who in the crisis have treated the city with humanity and moderation;

And you yourselves have taken solemn oaths as the jurors who are to decide my fate:

I believe that you will decide my case impartially and, far sooner than allow my enemies to defy justice by taking my life, will uphold justice by protecting me, as your laws and your oaths as jurors require you to do.

Thus the truth the matter is, gentlemen, that although it is my life alone which is at stake in this trial, your verdict will decide for the public at large whether they are to put faith in your laws, or whether, on the other hand, they must choose between buying off informers and quitting Athens as fast as they can.

Instead, I entreat you, gentlemen, you who are empowered to decide the most critical of issues;

Respect these considerations, and satisfy heaven and justice by acquitting me.

With these facts in mind, you must place implicit confidence in any and every indication from probability presented to you.

for the jurors are distributed by tribes into ten parts, nearly equal in each letter.

It is permitted to serve as juror to those over thirty years of age, all of them who do not owe money to the treasury or are without civic rights.

When the jurors are about to vote, the herald proclaims first, if the litigants object to the testimonies;

And so it is reasonable to expect you to punish with the greatest severity those who do wrong to you in respect to that which you prize most dearly.

You should, therefore, be of the same mind with respect to those who commit battery, and not consider whether they did not maul their victims thoroughly, but whether they transgressed the law, and you should punish them, not merely for the chance outcome of the attack, but for their character as a whole, reflecting that often ere now petty causes have been responsible for great evils, and that, be …

and if in battle we should all be willing to die for our democratic form of government and yet, in our votes as judges, especially favor men of property.