To not understand how a jury reaches its verdict

[Sportslady44]

I am following a court case at the moment and have been in the public gallery for a few days.

Listening to the evidence and prosecution and defence statements and summing up etc.

I wonder how the hell does a jury know who to believe. Both prosecution and defence make you believe they are right? So much to listen too etc and consider?

The only person who knows is the person on trial right?
How do the jury know?

I guess there is no fairer way of deciding but i realised that i wouldnt really want to make that call when you dont know?

I've done jury service and you have to decide on evidence presented, does it prove without doubt that the person did in fact do the crime.

Listening to the Judges summing up, is guidance.

You can't do your own assessment, ie they look like a thug so they must be one.

@ElizabethinherGermanGarden

It's really difficult. If you are on a jury with a disparate group of people and the evidence isn't a slam-dunk, the interesting thing is how entrenched some people get on reasonable doubt. I was on a jury where we were directed by the judge that we were entitled to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence, but the defence barrister really hammered the idea that we couldn't draw inferences, we had to have direct proof - the judge called the barrister out and said that he was wrong; reasonable inferences based on an accumulation of evidence are allowed, but at that point a couple of jurors had decided it wasn't fully proven and really dug in.

The amount of evidence you have to sift through in a complex case is huge and some jurors don't want to or struggle to read it all through again after the cases have been presented.

We reached a majority decision in the end as couldn't reach unanimous verdict and it was actually really quite an upsetting process. The thing that was great, though, is how seriously everyone on the jury took it. We took a week to reach a verdict and it was serious hard work every day. No one messed around or was flippant or casual.

I had similar, it was a he said she said type of fraud case and the defendant was a glib sales-man type, and we (9/12) had to convince 3/12 - all women- who felt sorry for the accused and believed his sob story, even when the facts clearly pointed to his crime. We spent 2 days arguing the science and evidence with the 3. In the end we (the 9) managed to get to a 11/12 majority by insisting on a paper anonymous vote, where finally 2 of the women (who were saying but he's too nice he couldn't possibly have done it ) changed their vote - we did it anonymous so that nobody lost face by changing what was at the start an adamant viewpoint. The last lady was a lost cause she blanked us and said nothing we would say would make her change her mind she couldn't convict anyone!

@YellowAndGreenToBeSeen oh God that would be too good to be true! I run my own business which I can structure to allow for 2 weeks off but my worst nightmare would be a trial which drags on beyond that.

@FusionChefGeoff when they are putting juries together, they let you know / ask you if you are able to take part in a long trial. Being self employed is a reasonable excuse I believe.

I found Jury service fascinating although I was very young at the time. I had always assumed that juries were made up of a panel of terribly wise people & I had no idea until I did it, that we were all just picked from the the electoral register.

Hence my shock at realising that over the three cases that we sat on, there were people on the jury who were sexist ('you just want to let him off because you fancy him'), had low level prejudice ('Well, he looks guilty doesn't he') and also racist ('The judge is one of them -they all stick together, don't they').

At the time it scared me because I realised that (of course) people bring their own experiences and prejudices into the room with them. That said, the majority of jurors were fair minded and happy to shut down all of the above as irrelevant and inappropriate and steer the focus back on to the evidence in front of us.

I was also horrified by the theatrical nature of the adversarial system. One of the barristers was clearly enjoying the performative aspect of his job but was using it to hugely slant the perspective of some fairly mundane information that he was presenting to us.

i.e (obviously this is made up and not the actual case!)

'In 1983, the defendant won numerous plaudits for his portrayal of Wishy Washy in the local amateur dramatic production of Aladdin. Clearly therefore he is a man capable of adopting many disguises and so was easily able to infiltrate GCHQ and jeopardise National security'.

It was a massive eye opener but I'm incredibly glad I had the opportunity to do it.

I really recommend the books by the Secret Barrister I think it's called. It really explains the judicial system and how it's got to where it is and the difference in the burden of proof between trials brought by the Crown and those that go before a magistrate.

the jury are out now on this one,

I agree with the PP who said if they were innocent they'd want a judge to decide their case, if they were guilty they'd want a jury.

I dislike the jury system because it solely relies on pot luck as to whether you get people who are biased towards/against you. Undoubtedly there are many people who'd try their best to judge a case fairly, but it's impossible for people to ignore their prejudices. Some will instinctively see a young black male as guilty, someone else will see them as a victim of a prejudiced society. Both views are wrong and have no place in a jury trial.

A relative always used to say (if they got called up for jury service) they'd find the person innocent if white and guilty if not, simply because the jury system is so inherently unfair there is no point actively engaging in it.

Having spent many years working for the CPS and watching juries return not guilty verdicts in cases which had, what we thought was, overwhelming evidence, I can honestly say I don't know.
Most of these cases were involving sexual offences as well.