Jury

[AutumnalRose]

Hello. I've had my summons to do jury duty in the next few months - I'm so excited!
As any of you done it, and how did you find it?

I’ve never been called up, I’d love to however for the all the inconvenience it causes I’d love a juicy case, homicide something interesting.

You could be looking at crime scene photos though. Is that really something you would be looking forward to looking at?
And whilst you are rubbing your hands together at the thought of it, the victim's family could be sat in the court too.

I was called recently. Got put on a murder case which lasted about ten days. It was hard work to trawl through all the evidence and all come to an agreement. And it's difficult because you can only go on what is given on court and there were so many gaps which people had questions about, which there were no answers to. I'm excused now for longer than the normal 2 years because of the type of case and will definitely be taking advantage of that if I get called again. It wasn't fun unfortunately.

I do feel like we did a thorough job tho.

I did it about 40 years ago. I got sent home after sitting about for hours for the first two days but the next day sat on a trial for gross moral turpitude. I felt the whole thing was ridiculous. It was clearly a horrible stitch up by the police (spy holes in public toilets in a park, late at night in the middle of winter - no sane person not involved would have witnessed it) whose time would have been better far spent catching some real criminals. The defence barristers were absolutely shit. One of them totally dropped his client in it. It was nothing like you see on the telly.
I tried to persuade the rest of the jury that we should find them not guilty because it shouldn't have been a crime but they weren't having it. Most of them clearly couldn't be arsed even discussing it and just wanted to find them guilty and fuck off home.
I refused to agree that they were guilty even though I knew they had done it so made them all stay there for hours but eventually it went through on a majority verdict.
It left a bit of a sour taste if I am honest and think the whole system is on a par with the shit that politicians spout.

Yes. I found it interesting. I spent some days being sent home as not needed but then got a 'stealing cars' case.

One of the things I hadn't thought about beforehand was the fact that you might get an upsetting murder or violence case. There was a notice in the jurors relaxing/coffee room and it offered counselling help if you heard horrible facts and were haunted by them. Fortunately I got thievery!

yes I can look at crime scene photos. I studied criminology before dcs, I’m just saying for all the inconvenience it causes to do jury service, I would like to attend a case that means something, where I can put my skills to use.

Dp did it years ago. He didn't want to do it and was mostly bored. Sat on a case for one day when at the end of the day one of the jurors suddenly announced she knew someone involved in the case, so the whole jury was dismissed.
I've always wanted to be called as I'm fascinated by it, and finally did get my letter to start in April 2020, just as we went into lockdown so it was cancelled. Gutted, as I bet I'll never get called up again.

Sorry.. just when you say you are looking forward to a juicy case.. it seemed a bit ghoulish.
Sorry for misunderstanding.

After I'd done jury service I thought I'd go back one day and sit in the public gallery and watch a case. Then I wondered if I was not nice for wanting to. I did eventually go to observe a case, just the once. Haven't managed to fit in another trip so far.

Just wondering, can you refuse to do it?

Well I'm not apologising as that's how it came across to me too.

Yes, if you meet one of the virtually un-meet-able circumstances that are laid out. I know of someone who got to defer it as they were a student nurse at the time and could prove it would be very hard to do jury services while studying. As a qualified nurse, they stood no chance of getting out of it the second time they were called.

You also have to make it known if you have any conflicts of interest which could affect an individual case, but I don't know exactly how that all works.

I did ODP training (uni course on placements too). Someone in my cohort was called up for jury duty. She could only defer, and not cancel it altogether. She ended up on jury duty during the summer break :(

Ahh I see. I thought sentencing was at the same time.

Murder trial. Now exempt from jury duty

This made me laugh 🤣

Yes, this person was told it could be deferred (this was at some point between 1994 and 1997 when they were called) but was never actually called again until earlier this year, which was a totally separate event from the first, at least so far as we know. But they did say (I checked just now) that it was "deferred" and not cancelled, even though they were never given a time & date to defer it to.

I hope referring to murder as "juicy" was just clumsy phrasing. Watching a documentary on murder is one thing as you can detach and be intrigued by why someone would do it and how the crime was solved. Being faced with the victims family and defendants family whilst listening to the details of how he or she killed someone is a different experience altogether and "juicy" is not the phrase I would use to describe it.

It was an interesting experience, but to go from a chat about expenses and swearing an oath or making an affirmation to having a dozen horrific charges of child SA read to you after jury selection was shocking.

I thought I'd be able to work in the breaks, but it was full on and mentally draining and it takes over. Deliberations were difficult and on occasion emotionally charged.

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry you feel this strongly about it and so I hope you don't get summoned x

No problem reading it back, it’s probably in bad taste, but that’s not at all what I meant 🤭

Hated it and hope I don't get called again.

We're constantly being asked to leave the court so "points of law" could be discussed, sat in a corridor for what seemed like hours before filing in again.
Interesting to see how the process works and glad to have experienced it but hope I don't have to again.

Rarely a judge will sentence at the same time as a trial and if they do they release the jury before hand. You often find its murder cases where Judge will inform the jury they can return and take their seats or sit in the public gallery for sentence but you can sit in the public gallery for sentences of most cases without being on a jury. It's is personal to the juror whether they take up the offer or not.

I did it this year. It was interesting procedurally although as pp's mentioned you don't actually hear the most interesting bits as the jury is sent out when they have to discuss a point of law. I found it pretty stressful and emotionally exhausting - we had an immigration case where, whatever the legal fact of it, we were judging someone who had had a pretty shit time and had spent 4 years n limbo living in one room with 2 small kids waiting for the court date. The worst case of a guilty verdict was her in prison and the children taken into care. I like to think of myself as someone who can be rational and judge the facts (lots of time in academia) but morally I genuinely felt that less harm would be caused by a not guilty verdict (didn't guarantee she'd be able to stay in the country, just that she wouldn't be applying with a criminal conviction and kids wouldn't be separated from her). It's not like the evidence was particularly harrowing, but the impact your decision has on someone's life is very real.

You can see what it's like in a court room any time, they're open to the public.

Be aware that you may not actually be called to serve on a jury. When my MIL was called, she turned up on the first day only to be told she wouldn't be needed, and that was the end of her jury service.