In the first place, a jury composed of peasants generally acts in a somewhat patriarchal fashion, and does not always confine its attention to the evidence and the arguments adduced at the trial.  The members form their judgment as men do in the affairs of ordinary life, and are sure to be greatly influenced by any jurors who happen to be personally acquainted with the prisoner.  If several of the jurors know him to be a bad character, he has little chance of being acquitted, even though the chain of evidence against him should not be quite perfect.  Peasants cannot understand why a notorious scoundrel should be allowed to escape because a little link in the evidence is wanting, or because some little judicial formality has not been duly observed.  Indeed, their ideas of criminal procedure in general are extremely primitive.  The Communal method of dealing with malefactors is best in accordance with their conceptions of well-regulated society.  The Mir may, by a Communal decree and without a formal trial, have any of its unruly members transported to Siberia!  This summary, informal mode of procedure seems to the peasants very satisfactory.  They are at a loss to understand how a notorious culprit is allowed to “buy” an advocate to defend him, and are very insensible to the bought advocate’s eloquence.  To many of them, if I may trust to conversations which I have casually overheard in and around the courts, “buying an advocate” seems to be very much the same kind of operation as bribing a judge.

In the second place, the peasants, when acting as jurors, are very severe with regard to crimes against property.  In this they are instigated by the simple instinct of self-defence.  They are, in fact, continually at the mercy of thieves and malefactors.  They live in wooden houses easily set on fire; their stables might be broken into by a child; at night the village is guarded merely by an old man, who cannot be in more than one place at a time, and in the one place he is apt to go to sleep; a police officer is rarely seen, except when a crime has actually been committed.  A few clever horse-stealers may ruin many families, and a fire-raiser, in his desire to avenge himself on an enemy, may reduce a whole village to destitution.  These and similar considerations tend to make the peasants very severe against theft, robbery, and arson; and a Public Prosecutor who desires to obtain a conviction against a man charged with one of these crimes endeavours to have a jury in which the peasant class is largely represented.

With regard to fraud in its various forms, the peasants are much more lenient, probably because the line of demarcation between honest and dishonest dealing in commercial affairs is not very clearly drawn in their minds.  Many, for instance, are convinced that trade cannot be successfully carried on without a little clever cheating; and hence cheating is regarded as a venial offence.  If the money fraudulently acquired be restored to the owner, the crime is supposed to be completely condoned.  Thus when a Volost Elder appropriates the public money, and succeeds in repaying it before the case comes on for trial, he is invariably acquitted—­and sometimes even re-elected!