Deputy Supreme Court Chairman Nikolai Timoshin and Sergei Zelenin, who heads a judicial panel in the court's Criminal Cases Collegium, outlined the concept at a roundtable held at the V. M. Lebedev Russian State University of Justice. Under the proposal, the number of jurors would be reduced to four, with a professional judge serving as the fifth member of the panel.
Currently the size of a jury depends on the level of the court. District and garrison military courts empanel six principal jurors and two alternates, while regional, territorial and republican supreme courts use eight principals and two alternates. The judge may increase the number of alternates, for instance when a case is complex.
Under the authors' plan, jurors would keep the right to decide guilt or innocence on their own and would remain under no obligation to explain their verdict. The presiding judge would be allowed to sit in the deliberation room with the jurors and explain the procedure for reaching a verdict.
Zelenin attributed the need for the changes to what he described as the current model's problematic performance: assembling a panel takes a long time, and verdicts are frequently overturned. He said the separation of jurors from a professional judge is an attribute of the Anglo-Saxon legal system, which he called "alien to the continental tradition," and argued that Russia should return to mixed panels.
He also said the authority of a professional judge sitting on the same panel as jurors would strengthen their confidence that they would not be subjected to unlawful outside pressure.
The concept includes other changes. Citizens over 65 would be allowed to serve on juries if their health permits. The practice of dissolving a jury because of bias in its composition would be dropped. A defendant would be given the right to voluntarily withdraw an earlier request for a jury trial. A court would be able to consider procedural issues outside the jurors' competence in their presence, though the jurors would not take part in resolving them.
In May, Putin ordered measures to reform jury trials and to increase citizens' motivation to serve as jurors. According to RBC, 643 cases out of 640,962 were heard with juries last year, about 0.1%.
Human rights advocate Eva Merkacheva has said Russians are reluctant to serve on juries, viewing the work as ineffective. According to her figures for 2024, jury trials acquitted 26% of defendants, while ordinary courts acquitted fewer than 0.5%. A significant share of jury acquittals, in some regions more than half, are overturned, and jurors themselves complain of pressure from judges and prosecutors, she said.