What was your jury service like?

[Eastie77]

Obviously I don't want anyone to write anything too revealing or expect a response from anyone who is currently on a jury but I'm interested in experiences other MNetter's have had.

I completed jury service a while ago and recently met up for a coffee with one of the jurors I bonded with. The case dragged on and on and was fairly unpleasant (kidnapping, fraud) but I was impressed by both the defence and prosecution legal teams and I learned about the law so overall it was quite interesting. We were reminiscing about some of the 'characters' on the jury.

Personally I was a little a little taken aback that one of the jurors really struggled with English and I wondered how on earth she followed a lot of the legal arguments and therefore made a decision based on the evidence presented. I’m not saying for a moment that poor English = less intelligent but even native speakers on the jury had trouble following a lot of the arguments so I think she must have struggled. Before this experience I had always believed a jury system was very fair I came away thinking I prefer the system in other countries where a group of judges decide as opposed to 11 random members of the public seems who may or may not be able to grasp what is going on!

You can’t get out of it if you have a kid/ say you can’t get childcare/ say you can’t get there/ say you’re self employed/ say you can’t afford to get there or lose a days wages etc.etc. They expect you to show up, as if by magic, and ‘reimburse’ you at some point in the future. Fucking farce.

This thread is fascinated. I'd love to be called for jury duty, although I should probably be careful what I wish for as some cases would be horrific.

I'm surprised a PP has been called 3 times when many people never get called at all.

Does anyone know how people are chosen? Is it a random generator?

I was called in my very early 20s. Ended up on a horrific case (child abuse, multiple victims) that ran for 3 weeks. Whilst the case was awful, we as a jury bonded so well. We all ate together in a nearby cafe every day, went for drinks after each day etc. There's a few of us that still keep in touch, many many years later! Ended up weirdly being one of the best experiences of my life. I think without the support and light hearted fun we had between the absolutely shocking awfulness of the case I'd have struggled. The last day, after we'd found the defendant guilty, we were stood outside the pub having a final pint together when the mother of two of the victims drove past in the car and honked and was streaming crying thank yous out of her car window. I well up even now thinking about it. So in summary, a godawful, warming, interesting, horrific, and dare I say rewarding experience.

Mine was an assault case. Pub drink argument glassing. Two day trial.

Obvious to me and one other person that the defendant was as guilty as hell but, as soon as we retired to consider our verdict, it became apparent the other 13 disagreed * and just wanted to go home. After voting to find him not guilty the foreman went on to discuss the secondary charges and it took the two of us who thought him guilty a hell of a time to convince him that by finding the defendant not guilty of the assault charge the other charges were rendered irrelevant. If he wasn't guilty of assault he couldn't be guilty of the others - whatever they were, I can't remember the exact details.

We had to get the usher to ask the Sheriff to confirm this (which he did) which made me wonder how much attention anyone else had actually been paying during the trial.

*a Scottish jury has 15 members - and three possible verdicts, 'guilty', 'not guilty', and 'not proven' - which probably means, "You're as guilty as fuck but you got away with it."

Mine was years and years ago. There was a lot of hanging about, but I covered 3 trials in total:
Fraud
Gbh
abh
The 1st was obviously guilty - the defence barrister also did a really poor effort in defending.
The 2nd I can’t remember what we decided. Both parties were pretty execrable as far as I recall
The 3rd I didn’t think was guilty and so spent a lot of effort persuading other members of jury to my way of thinking, and succeeded eventually. Looking back though, I think I was probably wrong and wish I hadn’t been intent on getting consent for my point of view. It has made me realise how easily people can be swayed, especially if they just want to get home at a decent time.
I wouldn’t mind doing another one, now that i’m older and wiser. However, I do remember hating the feeling of responsibility of deciding someone else’s future.

I've been called for jury duty about 7 times, picked to serve on a jury three times. Hopefully I'm done now!

Been called twice, once at the Royal Courts of Justice where they decided to settle out of court the day before it was due to start and that counted as having done the jury duty.
Then 5 years later called to a local court for a kidnap case. Some sitting around and reading.

I've never been called, but when my mother was, I remember she had a fellow juror who was doing A-level law, so found it really interesting. Also that she was quite shocked at how quickly she decided the defendant was guilty, and was then basically listening to the evidence to see if it backed her decision up or not - rather than hearing the evidence and then deciding.

A colleague did it a few months ago, and now wants to volunteer as a magistrate, it was such an interesting experience.

@Saffzy I volunteered to be foreman as the rest of the jury didn't want to do it.

The one thing that came as a surprise to me was how 'real' it was, I was fully anticipating it to be like watching a tv show as it's such an alien environment, but when debating and especially delivering the verdict, it was very real and serious as you are essentially deciding someone's fate, and finding them guilty likely sending them to prison. It's easy to look at it from the outside if you've never done it before and think you'll find it easy but when you're there it's a very serious situation and that's draining and hard work. I would definitely do it again though.

I've done it twice. Both cases were quite intense but the second one was the worst: rape within a relationship. A lady on the jury with me tried to insist that it couldn't be rape if it was within a relationship, even though the judge had EXPRESSLY told us that this was not the case. Fortunately she had 11 other people to explain it again to her!

I did jury service three years ago. Case was straightforward,not distressing and lasted four days. At the end a juror asked the clerk of the court (think that was her title) if we could openly discuss the case now. She said yes but you must never discuss any of your fellow jurors in a way which identifies them. Ever, otherwise that is contempt of court. I was excited to get the letter, then worried but in the end found it interesting.

How many will be betting on Jury Duty tomorrow after reading this post?

I was just 18! Spent the first week sitting around waiting, we weren't allowed to go home early (1996).

I was called for a case which lasted 3 days.

I was then selected to sit on the jury for a big old bailey case, estimated to last 6 months plus but due to a pre planned medical procedure I was dismissed before the trial started.

If you can't afford to do jury duty for the various reasons mentioned above - self employed, carer duties, no child care - and are "forced" to attend anyway, can you put yourself out of the running by claiming to know the defendant / saying you hate people with tattoos or that you're racist or homophobic etc (against whatever person or people involved in the trial)?

Sorry, I don't mean people with tattoos will always be involved in court cases 😖 I meant it more as a visible thing to latch on to that you're "against"

Claiming to know the defendant would definitely put you out of the running. When I was called up everyone in the pool of jurors had to fill in a questionnaire and answer if we knew anyone by the names of xxxxx (the defendants as it turned out). We also had to declare if we'd ever worked for a particular financial institution which was connected to the fraud element of the case. One of the defendants had an extremely common name, think along the lines of John Smith, so I imagine at least half of the pooled jurors could have claimed to know him.

My dad once got out of jury service. Which he wasn't looking forward to.

He was called, selected. It was carefully explained to everyone that this was going to be a long and complex trial and he was asked if he knew any one involved, defendants or any witnesses. Nope. He knew no one involved. The Jury was sworn in. Papers were shuffled. Someone got up to speak. My dad was just resigning himself to his fate when he noticed something. He called the clerk who was dealing with the jury.

"Does it matter that I know the judge?"

Doubt. Whispering. Clerk talks to the judge. The judge looks over recognises my dad... and declares that there will have to be a new jury.

I've been called up once, but was excused as I wrote to them explaining that I had asd and wouldn't be able to do it.

I found it interesting to have taken part, but the waiting around was tedious. I sat on three cases. Two of them I found quite distressing. I still get upset now 10 years later, partly because they were sexual assault cases and hit a raw nerve for me.

I was at the Old Bailey in London for a serious case - can't say what type as too obvious). Was there for over a month. I'd just turned 18 at the time and loved it.

I did mine last summer. I've been waiting to be called for ages and finally got called aged 50.

We did do quite a lot of waiting around. I remember being quite anxious just before we found out what the case was that it would be nasty. It was witness intimidation. The words that came to mind was "a bit squalid" But I found getting a little snapshot of people's lives fascinating!

Our court usher was great and the judge (a woman) really good.

I was desperate to talk to the other jury members about the case and it was great when we got to deliberate. Plus we got on well. And then, after the verdict, I could tell my dh all about it! In minute detail.

Thesandman that is amazing Can I ask how your dad knew him??

Are there things that exclude you? Like conditions not situations?

I watched the second episode of the MJ Finding Neverland documentary yesterday and interestingly when he had his child abuse court case and found not guilty, they showed clips of the jury being interviewed after the case and what they thought! I was thinking that would never happen here.