Three years ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 31 March 2006 11:13:34

I found myself in court after a particularly rough night.

I was asked to serve as a juror and told to turn up at the crown court at 9am on the Monday morning. Since the court is only a 10 minute walk from our house that would normally be no problem at all. Unfortunately, I was already booked to go to a conference in Göttingen until the Sunday. And the only flight I could get arrived back at Heathrow at 10pm on the Sunday night. Fortunately the coaches to and from Heathrow run all night, so it was actually possible to get home, albeit at 3am. The coach was fairly packed and the guy I sat next to was grumbling about all these people catching the coach he was on, when surely they must have arrived at Heathrow earlier and so could have caught an earlier coach. I gently pointed out that I had just arrived, and that planes would probably be landing for a while yet, and he just grunted. He then got his revenge by talking to me for half the journey home, until he got off at 1am, kindly preventing me from sleeping.

Anyway, eventually I arrived home and after carefully setting the alarm clock (they make it sound really scary if you don't turn up), I slept for 5 hours, before heading down to the court. It was slightly embarrassing when I went into the building because there is a security check, which detected that I had a mini-Swiss army knife attached to my keyring. Whoops. (Did I take that on the plane to Germany and back? I'm not sure).

Once they had let me in I had to sit for a couple of hours before getting called. The waiting area is a bit strange - a cross between a supermarket café (you can buy some food and drink there, even lunch, of about the same quality as a supermarket café) and a station waiting room - which tends to make you forget that this is a place that decides people's futures - whether they go to prison or not. After that I'm legally obliged to say pretty much nothing, but what struck me most forcibly was how the whole thing was set up to try and let the judge and jury do their job as well as possible.

The days were short, because longer days would have lowered our concentration, so we wouldn't have been able to judge things as carefully as we should. If there was any problem, then the day was adjourned, because to carry on would have meant not doing things as well as they could be done. And after the one case, which only lasted three days, our jury service was ended because it was felt that that case was unpleasant enough that we shouldn't endure more.

In short, I gained a lot of faith in the justice system. It's not perfect, and when the judge summed up the case and, I felt, missed out some key points, or gave an emphasis which I felt wasn't right, I realized that there is a human role and that humans are always fallible. I would not like to be a judge - although the jury theoretically decides, it is clear that the judge is responsible to a large extent for helping the jury reach the right verdict. I suppose in all cases the judge has made up her or his mind, and probably sighs when the jury disagrees.

One result of this is that I am even more suspicious than normal when I read reports of legal cases in the papers. They are usually presented in a very biassed manner and frequently try to make you feel that justice was not done. But now I believe that generally the press will not have been following the case as carefully as the judge and jury, they will not have the legal knowledge of the judge, and so if they think there was injustice, then it's probably because they have misunderstood what happened. Unfortunately I have several close relatives in the media (and some fellow wibloggers!), so I'll probably get told off for saying this.

One issue that the media often focus on is how juries are not allowed knowledge of previous crimes committed by the suspect. In our case we were told, after we had given our verdict, that the defendant had committed several similar crimes in recent years, which, of course, made us all certain that the defendant was guilty. But I think it would have been terrible to be told that beforehand - how could we possibly have taken an unbiassed view of the evidence if we had been told that the defendant had a history of doing such things? I hope I'm preaching to the converted, but it can't be said too often that if previous prosecutions are allowed to be brought up in court, then when, for example, a house is burgled, all the police (if they are corrupt, e.g., distracted by targets that have been set for them by a government in fear of the media) would have to do is find someone local who has been caught for burglary before, and a jury is practically guaranteed to convict them with no further evidence.

Although it is absolutely forbidden to talk about details of the jury's deliberation, I can't think of this story without laughing. Because, despite the case concerning some rather unpleasant activity (or maybe because it did) we spent a lot of our time in the jury room laughing. There were some very funny jokes, unfortunately unrepeatable because they hinge on details of the case, but it made the whole experience a very good one.