Australia’s legal system leaves juries stranded in a time warp – the world has moved on

‘We are brought up on the belief that our common-law way of dealing with criminal prosecutions is the very flower of fairness. Sadly, it is not.’ Photograph: Peter Rae/AAP

If you wanted to design a criminal trial system that was expensive, long-winded and capable of delivering indeterminate results, then ideally it should require a jury of 12 true citizens.

The jury in its early days was a genuflection towards the democratic ideal – for the fate of alleged offenders to be determined by their peers.