Should I do jury service?

[Juryorrun]

I’ve been summoned to do jury service. I have good reasons to be excused from it, and those same reasons would make it a right old ballache to do (caring responsibilities etc). And I would also have an almost 2 hour journey to get there, and the same back each day.

It says 10 days service on the letter, but also says it may go on longer. Is that a standard thing it always says, or is it really likely to be around the 10 day mark? If it’s going to be a lot longer than that it definitely wouldn’t be possible.

BUT…I’ve always wanted to do jury service and I’d actually like to do it. I know it probably won’t be as exciting as I’m expecting it to be, but I think it would be interesting.

So AIBU for not getting out of it when I easily could, and it will be a right PITA logistics wise?

@Tiddlywinks63 was this the court in your county or was it another court and he could have had a nearer one. Obviously a lot of people, especially those that live more rurally may live miles from the court. My local Crown court is Northampton on a direct bus route but It would be a bit of a job if I had to go to say, Peterborough or Leicester.

It depends in the reason. I'm autistic and have a permanent excusal.

@Zanatdy No, what IS outrageous is the system of juries that leads to such circumstances. The jury system shouldn’t exist. As I said above where I am (not UK but based on UK system, not sure if differences), there CAN be judge only trials. Usually a defendant’s lawyer will put across the request based on publicity/fact any potential jury would be tainted from the outset. Sometimes it’s approved, sometimes not. Sometimes the preliminary judge (where they dictate the person will go to trial and either be held in custody or on bail while waiting for trial) will put forward it’s in best interest for a judge only trial. Judge only trials are panels, not one judge. If they can do it for some cases I don’t see why this can’t be the case for all cases or why this can’t be done irrespective of system/country.

I'm miffed I've never been called to do it.

@HoppingPavlova unless that was decades ago it sounds like you’re being spun a tale, probably because the person involved rightly feels ashamed of themself.

Sequestration of a jury is extremely rare in England and Wales and a ten day sequestration without a majority direction bizarre

I don't get it you've either got a valid can't get out reason so will try to appeal or you haven't. But what you seem to be asking is if it's interesting enough to not need the reasons ...which implies you don't really have a reason to be excused.

I did it about 15 years ago.

Before kids so no childcare arrangements but I live in a village so getting to the city centre took 1.5 hours.

The trial was over 3 weeks as it was a murder trial. The court knows when a case is likely to go over the two weeks so they ask potential jurors if it's a problem and you're able to say no.

I really enjoyed the experience. Quite an eye opener, lots of sitting around and reading my book, and I'd love to do it again one day!

My mum has done it twice. Some of the evidence can be stomach churning!

The current adversarial system is not perfect by any stretch, but serves better imo than the inquisitive approach which places huge trust in one individual, potentially open to bias and worse. It reduces the ability for testing of evidence and challenge as well as reducing a defendant’s legal protections.

I think there is room for special judge panels in certain cases, as now, with expansion to other areas. But generally speaking I see jury trials as a critical element in justice being served.

Greater efficiencies could be created by proper investment in the criminal justice system across the board but historically the public have not supported that.

I hope I'm never called - being self-employed it would be a real pain in the arse - it would also really inconvenience all my clients as they rely on me so they can go to work everyday.

DH is also self-employed and we would both lose a lot of money (and potentially work in the long run) if we had to do it.

They'd just have trial by judge, not jury.

I don't see why that's so shocking?

Oh please

If you knew history you would know why that approach was discontinued

My MIL got quite worked up at the prospect of jury service as she didn't want to be potentially responsible for sending someone to prison, but after all that she got sent home on the first day as they had called too many jurors.

My brother didn't particularly want to do it but had a very different experience. He ended up sitting on three short trials, and was a foreman for one of them as no-one else was volunteering. He was in his Goth phase at the time and the defence probably thought he was a gift to them, but actually he took his duty to weigh up the evidence very seriously. He ended up finding the whole process fascinating.

Whatever you do, OP, take a good book, a phone charger, and other stuff to do like knitting, crossword puzzles etc or whatever you like doing that's reasonably portable. There can be an awful lot of waiting around.

I think we probably have a reasonable compromise in the UK where juries are kept for the most serious cases but the majority are decided by a stipendiary magistrate on their own or a bench of three lay magistrates.

Point taken, I've done jury service 4 times and just based my response on my experiences when we were deadlocked for days.

@Notacrescentcroissant regardless of the history, the current system clearly isn't working the way it is 🤷‍♀️

Of course people are going to be pissed off when they're forced to miss days or even weeks off with little to financial compensation to do something they don't even care about in the first place.

It's hugely unfair that people are expected to sacrifice their incomes and even their businesses in order to sit on juries.

This was my experience too. Donated my expenses to rape support services.

I was called to do it about 8 years ago. Dates fit ok with work, organised everything I needed to and I was quite looking forward to it!

Got a call a week out that they had too many people and asking if I would volunteer to step down. Seemed a bit odd, they wanted me to volunteer not to do it rather than tell me I wasn't needed. But I felt I couldn't exactly insist that I attended!

Nothing since, if I was called now it would be much more of a pain with young children/more demanding work than it was then. My mum is nearly 70 and has never done it so maybe I'll get away without being called ever again.

@PegasusReturns I’m in Australia.

That should say "miss days or even weeks of work".

I found it very interesting. Of course it will depend, but there was a lot of sitting about waiting to be called - you need to take a good book! My set of jurors were called for two relatively short cases, no more than 3 days each.

I didn’t do the full 10 days, we were told we could go home a day or two before the end.

My exh has done it twice and never actually been picked to sit on a jury because they summon more people that is actually needed. He said both times it was very boring and a lot of sitting around for 2 weeks!

2 of my family did it recently. In both cases they knew from day 1 how long their first case was. One had a more shocking case so he was told the court clerk would try to ensure he would have a less emotional case for his second (which didn't materialise).

I think if you were going to have a longer case you would know very quickly.

Well, let's hope neither you nor any of your family find yourselves needing a jury trial and there is 'no-one who gives a fuck' to serve on it

@Notacrescentcroissant

I hope so too 🤷‍♀️ but you can't force people to give a shit, especially when just attending puts many people under serious financial pressures.

IMO general population shouldn't be held responsible for anyone's fate in the legal system, especially when they're not even being fairly compensated for doing so.

Then I knew of one murder trial where the defendant was deemed overwhelmingly guilty by all but one juror. However, the verdict must be unanimous and the one juror wouldn’t budge. The judge wouldn’t accept they couldn’t come to a unanimous verdict so sent them to a hotel (couldn’t be excused until they all agreed). So on day 10 all the other jurors folded to the one juror, not because they agreed, but so they could finally go home from being trapped in the hotel (access to room and conference room only - no mobiles etc permitted). Trial was in fourth month at this point. The person I knew was absolutely distraught that an obviously guilty murderer walked free simply due to one idiot.

If this is supposed to have happened in England, that could only be true if it happened before 1967 when majority verdicts came in. It's also been very rare since around 1990 for juries to be sequestered in hotels. Given your mention of mobile phones, @HoppingPavlova, this story sounds very iffy indeed. No judge would do this, simply because if the verdict had gone the other way and the accused had been convicted they would have had cast-iron grounds of appeal.