Juries Urged for Soviet Criminal Trials : Reform: Lawmakers argue that the change is necessary to provide guarantees to new civil rights legislation.

Soviet lawmakers, debating reform of the country’s judicial system, called Wednesday for the institution of jury trials in criminal cases.

When Yevgeny Smolentsev, chairman of the Soviet Union’s Supreme Court, presented draft legislation on new judicial procedures to the national legislature, a number of deputies demanded that it include the right to trial by jury.

The deputies argued that the legislation’s promise of strengthened protection of an individual’s civil rights requires guarantees that only a jury trial can provide.

“This bill appears to have been drafted to avoid the most acute questions, though they have been discussed long ago by society,” Fyodor M. Burlatsky, chairman of the Soviet Commission for Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights, declared. “This bill takes slow and timid steps. . . . But then the question arises: Will there be anything new? Lets not produce half-measures here.”

Other deputies joined Burlatsky, one of the country’s leading political scientists, in asserting that jury trials are particularly necessary in weighing the evidence in crimes of violence and in political cases.

Anatoly Lukyanov, vice president of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament), eventually told the deputies that their plan to establish jury trials could be included in other legislation now in committee.

Trial by jury has been discussed for several years by reformist lawyers, but it would be a radical departure from longstanding Soviet practice, in which criminal cases are heard by a judge with lay assessors from the community.

The deputies’ demand for legislation on the right of a jury trial also reflected a widespread mistrust of Soviet courts, which regained a semblance of independence only this summer after more than 55 years under the direct control of the Justice Ministry and state prosecutors.

Legislation approved in August seeks to ensure the judiciary’s independence through legal guarantees barring political interference and 10-year terms for judges. But deputies said more checks and balances are needed.

The deputies also called for family and juvenile courts.

Yuri Kalmykov, deputy chairman of the committee on legislation, had argued for consolidation of the Soviet Union’s present legal system before diversifying the number of courts.

The draft legislation, breaking with the practice of centrally dictated measures, elaborates new court procedures but gives the constituent republics the opportunity to introduce local practices reflecting different traditions.