Just finished Jury Service on a 5-week case. AMA.

[PurpleWithRed]

I was called for Jury Service after Christmas for the first time ever. Got assigned to a relatively long and complex case. The case and sentencing are now in the public domain so AMA.

Was your work ok about it?

I got called last year, had to go 3 mornings but thankfully wasn’t selected. I’d always been interested in doing it but jeez those 3 days were dull as fuck and so much hanging around.

Do you think trial by jury is a reliable way of getting the just result?

Were there any people on the jury who didn't understand the evidence, or who weren't good at weighing up evidence?

Did you find the court process time efficient?

What did you do about work and childcare?

Are you allowed to talk about the case?

Yes be interested to hear about the other jurors as my DH was really upset about the views of those who were on the jury with him when he did it
Very Bad at critical thinking he felt and for want of a better way of putting it, not very intelligent.

You need to be careful here. From GOV.UK website:

fter the trial you must not talk about what happened in the deliberation room, even with family members. You can talk about what happened in the courtroom.

Do not post comments about the trial on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter - even after the trial’s finished. This is contempt of court and you can be fined or sent to prison.

• @muttnutts - yes, I know, the Judge was very clear about all that!

Work: work were a bit shocked but were OK: you can opt out of a long case if you are selected and if your company will be seriously disadvantaged that counts as a get out of jail card. My organisation is publicly funded so they felt it was their duty to let me go, we were ahead of schedule, and we can buy in help if necessary.

Overall I felt our Jury did work. We were warned up front that it would be complex with lots of paperwork and if that was going to be a problem to let them know. At the end of the day the detail was complex but the big picture was clear. I felt we did understand what was going on (despite it being a complex money laundering case). Everything is explained in excruciating detail in court so the points are hard to miss!

The jury have a very simple job - we only have to say whether the evidence presented is enough for us to turn 'presumed innocent' into guilty. we don't have to decide how guilty, that's the judge's job.

The three days I was there felt like a total waste of time and effort. It took them 3 hours to do what we could have done in private sector in 20 mins.

During the selection process You have to be there for 9, they piss about, in and out, picking babes out of a hat, speaking with people... at 12 you either get sent home or asked to return at 1... and finish for the day at 4.

Court process - well, obviously once you're there you belong to them so you are entirely at their whim. On a single long case like this it wasn't bad - we lost a couple of days to sickness (barrister) and couldn't be called and told not to come in as the computer system was down, but the case ran very close to what was predicted. We ran Monday-Friday, were generally sitting by 10, had a break at 11:30, an hour's lunch at 1, finished by 4:30 at the latest.

I wasn't paid by my company - had to take unpaid leave - so it actually cost me money. The court pays a loss of earnings allowance but only £65 for the first 10 days; £130 after that. We had no canteen so also got a food allowance and travel expenses.

@Redtartanshoes I think once a case gets going it's all more efficient - in all honesty with the amount of information we had to absorb we couldn't have sat for any longer each day. But a lot of fresh jurors arrived each Monday and spent time hanging around waiting for something to happen

Redtartanshoes Me too, I think out of my 2 weeks I only spent about 3/4 days in the court room most of the time was waiting for the 'legal arguments' to finish so we could go back into court.

Jeez I’d be fucked off if I didn’t get paid! £55 a day wouldn’t begin to cover my loss of earnings.

Question... do you think people should be able to volunteer to be in the selection pot for jury service. Retired

You don’t get paid nor your company reimbursed? That’s awful. Wow that would make it impossible for some families surely?

I sat on JS for a week and a bit and it was a revelation. God help the public and the accused. My jury of 12,,only at best 6 of them could be arsed to analyse and contribute.. The rest either opted out or followed like sheep. I had to drive hard to prevent a guilty verdict due to the agenda of one particularly assertive female.

Question... do you think people should be able to volunteer to be in the selection pot for jury service. Retired

No way. You’d get all kinds of bigots, cranks and people with more time on their hands than sense volunteering to fulfil their own agendas or fill their days.

From my own experience of JS, the current system isn’t perfect but I can’t think of a reasonable alternative that would be better.

Did you enjoy it?

Forgetting the public service element, forgetting whether you get paid or not ... did you enjoy the experience? I was finally called last year, only got one full case in my two weeks' service. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, I'm fascinated by how courts work etc.

Definitely no to volunteers - I imagine random selection does a lot to limits the number of barking mad axe grinders per jury

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of our jury to be honest, but we are in a relatively upmarket county and they did make it clear it was going to be a complex case with lots of paperwork and people could opt out if they thought that was going to be a problem. We also had a lot of time together hanging around forbidden from discussing the case so we got to know each other. There were certainly some more outspoken jurors (not least me) but we did make sure everyone got their say. I’m not allowed to talk about anything that happened during deliberation.

Overall I did enjoy it - the judge gave us all a 10 year get-out-of-jury-service-free ticket but most of us said we’d go back sooner if asked.

However, I think I’ve forgotten how desperately tedious the first couple of weeks were while the prosecution went through their case in meticulous detail and did the hard work of introducing us to the paper trail. Nobody actually snored but most of us came close.

Yup, jury service is a duty and if your employer won’t keep your salary going then it’s very likely to cost you money.

I am very very slightly tempted to look into becoming a magistrate...

Are you allowed to tell us what the case was?

It was 'conspiracy to transfer money known or suspected to be stolen'. The key thing (we realised) is that the defendants are being tried on the verb - ie did they conspire. There were also 6 defendants in the case, which is why it lasted so long.