[Closed] Jury Duty - Again!

scotroutes
Free Member

Once. Rape case. I was convinced the verdict should have been not guilty but there was a small majority the other way. I felt really bad afterwards that I hadn’t done enough to persuade a couple of other folk to my way of thinking. The accused was Asian and a couple of folk on the jury had made up their minds he was guilty before we’d even heard any evidence.

Is there not a process where you can report that sort of thing to the court?

I loved jury duty when I did it a few years back, I was on some really interesting cases and I learned a lot.

Some were worried about work and losing money but luckily I was in a job that was easily handled by others if I wasn't there and my company made up the difference between jury duty pay and my salary.

Just out of curiosity, all those saying it was a waste of their time - how would you prefer to be tried if you were facing a criminal trial?

The Secret Barristers book us a damning summary of the mess the system is in due to underfunding, but even he can't see a better alternative.

I’ve had 2, first one was donkeys years back when I was in the Navy and although I could have dodged it I wasn’t going to knock a couple of weeks at home!

Did my last one 2 years ago this month, bloody awful thing, knocked me for some time afterwards. Some horrible things happen to people.

Wear a square black hankie on yer heid during selection. You’ll either be jailed or excused duty.

HAH!

Been called once to the local Crown Court, was over 10 years ago now. Quite a lot of sitting around and getting bored until we were called for a case. I think I did two cases in two weeks. Each lasted about three days. Nothing particularly upsetting, drugs and GBH. Was interesting seeing how it worked. Most of the other people on the jury seemed pretty sound TBH.

Even got my train travel and lunch paid for and it was normally a nice late start (10am) and early ish finish. So almost like a mini break.

Four times does seem a bit excessive.

Just out of curiosity, all those saying it was a waste of their time – how would you prefer to be tried if you were facing a criminal trial?

By Jury obviously.

That doesn't mean I expect the system to force under duress those jurors to take two weeks holiday or unpaid, or if they're freelance like me turn down whole blocks of work.

If it was a job interview you'd walk out, but ironically if you did you'd end up in front of a jury.

Just out of curiosity, all those saying it was a waste of their time – how would you prefer to be tried if you were facing a criminal trial?

By a randomly selected professional jurors - from a large enough pool with enough checks and balances so as to keep corruption at a level that is representative of the population but not representative of the general publics crass stupidity.