concept
Jurymen (prisyazhnye zasedateli)
jurymen
also: присяжные заседатели
Lay jurors drawn by rotation from local property-owning and peasant households to serve at circuit-court trials under the 1864 judicial reform; Filaretov's brief stint as one of three men called up from his township, and the days he spent held for it, is the closest he has come to being 'under the law' before this interrogation.
Reading notes
- Darkness §23 The gentlemen of the jury
Trial by jury (prisyazhnye zasedateli) was introduced by the 1864 judicial reform and drew lay jurors, including propertied peasants, by rotation from the local population -- which is exactly the irony Kirila seizes on in the next line: the "gentlemen" who convicted his brother were ordinary villagers like himself.
- Thou and You §26 jurymen
Prisyazhnye zasedateli -- lay jurors called up by rotation from local households under the 1864 judicial reform to serve at circuit-court trials. Filaretov's stint as one of three men summoned from his township, for which he was held for several days, is the only brush with the legal system he can recall -- and Popikov has to correct him that jury duty doesn't count as "having been tried."
- In the Court §9 the shuffling of the jurors
Trial by jury (prisyazhnye zasedateli) for serious criminal cases was one of the signature innovations of the 1864 judicial reform; the story's jurors are never individualized or quoted, appearing only as a collective mass of "weary faces" -- part of its portrait of justice as mechanical process rather than deliberation.