ИСТИНА

The revival of the jury trial in Russia in 1993 changes the face of Russian justice, positively affecting the quality of the preliminary investigation, bringing real competitiveness to the judicial process, increasing the confidence of citizens in the judicial system and constructively influencing the process of legal socialization. Since 2018, criminal cases involving jurors began to be examined not only in regional courts, but also in district courts. In regional courts 8 jurors (instead of 12) participate in boards now, and in district courts 6 jurors. This opens up the possibility to study the socio-psychological characteristics of juries of different sizes. The possibility of observation of deliberations is forbidden by the procedural law, therefore, along with observing non-verbal reactions of the jurors during the trial and pleadings, the regularities of the verdict of the mock juries of different composition are investigated. Observation in real trials and analysis of video recordings of deliberation of mock juries allowed to investigate the group dynamics in decision-making, as well as the communication of members of the panels, the dependence of the verdict on the phenomena of leadership, the influence of majority-minority and even on the spatial placement of the jury. During the revival of the jury trial in 1993-1995, laboratories with the participation of social psychologists were created at the regional courts, which started а tradition of complex empirical research on judicial material. Since that time, systematic studies of socio-psychological factors of decision-making by jurors are conducted at the Department of Social Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology of Lomonosov Moscow State University under the guidance of the author. The obtained data are demanded by the parties to the process, first of all by the defense, and can also be taken into account in the design of courtrooms and deliberative rooms.