Feeling awful after jury service

[Jn5]

I was on a jury. After some deliberation we came to a verdict, but for me personally it was at no point an easy decision. However the evidence we had meant we had to come to that decision.
Now it has finished, and we can seek out further information that we weren't privy to, and lots of time to run thing over and over again in my head - I’m wondering if the wrong verdict was given.
Just wondering if anyone has been through something similar and how you came to terms with it. I'm struggling today and feeling a lot of guilt regarding the decision I took along with the other jurors.

That's during the trial. You can do all the research you want after the trial.

The police have spent probably months/years and hundreds of thousands of pounds compiling the evidence, googling something else is just pointless cos it cant be proved

You have to go on the evidence presented and you have to be sure of the guilt based on that evidence to convict, they are the basic criteria for conviction.

If you have done that then you have done your duty.

14 years, trouble is a lot of perpetrators dont think of the consequences when they commit the crime

I sat on the jury of a historical sex abuse case...the evidence was patchy as it was all such a long time ago. I met the defendant's lawyer later socially after he'd been convicted and sent to jail....

The lawyer said he felt we'd done the right thing.

No wonder most victims of sex crimes don’t report.
I was discussing this with dh. I said if offered either the choice of going to court or settling for a large financial settlement, I would take the money. We were discussing the likes of MJ & GG who’s victim’s families accepted money. Dh was shocked when I said I would 100% do the same.
What good is there to be had from having to relive the ordeal over and over just for the bastard to be found not guilty?
As an aside I would never whistleblow either. That never goes well for the whistleblower.
The poor victims in these cases.
It’s the law which is letting them down.

In our case, we couldn’t see any reason the victim would lie, no vendetta, but it was a case from 20+ years ago, so the evidence was only his recount to friends & police all these years later. The defence actually revealed all the accused past cautions, none of which related. All I kept thinking was if this was true, how I felt for the victim recalling it all, but was also told sympathy and assumptions can’t come into it. We all said the same, that something likely happened to the victim but there was no real evidence to convict. Feel so so awful.

Hi OP. I can understand how you feel, via my boyfriends experience last year. I have never done jury duty myself, but he was on an 8 week trial last year and in the end there just wasn’t enough evidence and it was agreed not guilty. He was so torn up about it for a good few days afterwards, it really got into his head. People who haven’t been in this position can’t understand how much it can consume you, it becomes your whole life for that short space of time. If it makes you feel any better though, after a week or so he managed to shake the feelings and moved on! Hope you can too 💐

I was on a jury last year and found it very upsetting. I comforted myself by believing that jurors are a 'witness to justice'. It is actually the judge who very strongly directs you into your verdict by their phrasing in summation. They know the intricacies of the law even if we don't like where it leads.

DBro was foreman of a jury where they were perfectly sure that the accused and his associates were up to something, but the evidence simply came nowhere near proving what he was accused of. They had no problem in finding him Not Guilty, because that was their job, and indeed the judge effectively signalled that he thought they were right. DBro was however quite startled at the sheer fury in the look prosecuting counsel shot him when he gave the verdict. He still has no regrets about the verdict and refuses to blame himself and the other jurors for the fact that the prosecution didn't do their job properly.

But it has to be that way - otherwise we'd be depriving people of their liberty on a suspicion or possibility that they were guilty.

That ship sailed years ago. As any sub postmaster will tell you.

It sucks but it’s a natural outcome where we believe in the right to a fair trial. There has to be a lot of evidence for a conviction in a criminal court.

OP very similar case back in June, happened 10 years ago. Clearly something had happened to the defendant but not enough evidence to fine the accused guilty. Still feel we let her down 😔

Awful isn’t it? I can’t help feeling empathy. They both agreed on all the circumstances happening, except the crime. So it was one persons word against the other. And some of the key witnesses, who gave evidence of recounts, we not that reliable. So tough.

You're actually told not to in no uncertain terms. You can't Google the judge or any of the witnesses either. If you are a juror and you do this you're supposed to tell the judge. This is because if a juror reads or hears something which then influences their view and interpretation of the evidence, or they tell other jurors then there may be a mistrial declared. Any conviction would be unsafe.

Then you did a good job and there was a failure of the prosecution to give you the smoking gun you needed. Your job was to judge on the evidence presented and not your moral conscience.

I had a similar experience about 20 years ago and it still preys on my mind occasionally and would make me reluctant to do jury duty again. It was a violent crime and I felt like we'd failed the victims and their families. Your comment: "We all had a strong feeling something had happened but not enough evidence or proof regarding the charges themselves. Only a gut feeling." Is exactly how I felt.

It helps me to think I was just one small cog in a bigger machine - a conviction relies on agreement across the majority of jurors but also on the criminal justice system bringing the evidence to court that means that you can agree a verdict beyond reasonable doubt. It's not your fault this happened. You did your best with the information you had available.

It’s a long time ago but I remember a work colleague was on a jury of a man found guilty. He said the relief he felt when the list of “priors” was read out was immense.

I am guessing you returned Not Guilty? If that is all the evidence presented was worth, then so be it. The bar is very high for beyond all reasonable doubt.

I think some cases are just next to impossible for jurors.

There's cases where balance of probability says a person is likely guilty, but the evidence just isn't there for a beyond reasonable doubt conviction. In those cases you have to find not guilty, because the evidence doesn't support anything else.
It's awful though because you know there's a reasonable chance that you're letting someone guilty walk and you know what the knock on impact on the victim could be.

There's nothing for a jury member to feel guilty about, they've done their duty to the best of their ability and come to a conclusion based on the evidence provided.
The alternative would be convicting even though you weren't certain from the evidence provided, that will just lead to lingering guilt the other way that you may have convicted someone innocent.

Genuinely don't think there's a good answer for cases where intuition/statistics say one thing but the evidence just isn't there for the specific case. There's always going to be what if feelings even though you've your best as a jury member. Absolute worst type of cases to be on the jury for imo.

I was a Magistrate and it is not an easy thing to do to pass judgement on someone. The way I coped was to go by the evidence presented (not the evidence you wish was there), and fight your corner. If you present your feelings and defend them and are still outvoted then that is democracy at work. It allowed me a clear conscience.

As far as your responsibility goes, did you give the best verdict on the evidence presented? If so it doesn’t matter what you read afterwards, it’s irrelevant. If the defendant’s solicitor/barrister feels it was unfair it will be appealed.

You have to reframe what your job was. You were not there to give justice to the victim. You were there to decide whether the case against the defendant had been proved. That’s why we declare people “not guilty” rather than innocent - because they may well have commit the crime but it can’t be proved.

There’s a saying that it’s better to have 100 guilty people go free than 1 innocent person go to prison - and that really is true on a societal level. Society would fall apart if you could be imprisoned on a shaky case, and the damage to the innocent party in that case is much bigger than the ‘peace’ for the victim of their perpetrator going to prison (because sentencing doesn’t undo their victimisation).

It’s okay to feel like the victim has been failed, and they may well have - but this is by the police and the prosecution. You have contributed to society by making a difficult decision to ensure that a potentially innocent person didn’t go to jail.

This is not correct though.

Let’s say a new law came in making misgendering someone mental assault, equivalent to GBH in sentencing.

There is video evidence that a mother of daughters and a transgender son shouted “come on girls” to hurry them up.

She has pleaded Not Guilty as it’s a habit that she hasn’t managed to drop in stressful situations but she mostly gets it right. You are on the jury, the judge directs you to convict.

Do you?

This is a deliberately contrived story to make a point. If you feel that a defendant is guilty but should not have been prosecuted you do not have to convict. That’s part of the benefit of being tried by your peers.

I’m obviously not saying a future government will bring this law in.

On a similar vein if I was on a jury where a defendant was being prosecuted for a Facebook post after a violent incident in the news I would not find them guilty.

Something similar happened to an ex colleague- she was the only one who wanted a guilty verdict but judge took a majority so was found not guilty. My colleague was upset about it for ages.
I really think we need to overhaul the jury system in this country and offer counselling and aftercare for jurors after difficult cases. I can't believe you are just expected to walk away and not speak about it again.
But at the end of the day you were part of a 12 person jury and made a decision together based on the evidence so it's not on you.

Hard one but it has to be this way, remember blind lady justice. Let it go now. Others have said it better upthread. All the best.

There's evidence around that people are more likely to find someone of a different race from them guilty of a crime, so that's why sometimes it's a good thing to go against your 'gut feeling.' Gut feeling can sometimes just be social conditioning. That's fine when you're making decisions about your own life; not about someone else's though. That's why hard evidence is needed. That's why you did the right thing.

This is why in Scotland there's a third option - "Not proven" - basically that you all think they're guilty but can't prove it.

It's not your fault the system is set up how it is. It's done now, there's nothing you can do, appeals can be made, it's not the end of the world.