Have you served on a jury? Genuine question.
my one positive takeaway from my 3 weeks service 18 months ago (see my previous post on sheer frustrations) was the attitude and approach by all the jurors.
it is a common misconception that the jurors need knowledge of law and therefore “spent years training on the law and are experts on it, hearing evidence and deciding if the law has been broken” would produce a better, quicker judgement. That is simply not the jurors job. That’s judges job to explain the law, it’s the CPS barrister and his their terms job is to present evidence of the crime, and defences to present evidence on why the defendant hasn’t broken the law. The jurors job is simple: which evidence do we believe is the truth. That’s it. What We agree is the truth is the verdict of guiltily or not guilty. Jurors are never asked to make decisions on the law itself. In fact it’s outside of a jurors role. There is a full briefing document giving the details of the law and what very spepcifc things you are be asked to decide. The judge constantly steers the jury on matters of the law, and the barristers for that matter 😳
all the jurors on my case were taking that seriously. They listened to copius instructions from judge on matters of law. They diligently read 3 ring binders of written evidence which we waded through verbally line by line in court. They took deligent notes on evidence to remind themselves later what they’d heard. We as a group discussed many times when one of us was not clear on a point of evidence, or had missed something others heard, or where we interpreted something said differently. We helped each other resolve it or sent questions to judge (which you can do). We deliberated in a very disciplined way listening to each jurors points in turn before even discussing the verdict. We treated each other and the defendants and witnesses with respect
it was a bloody refreshing reminder, frankly, that most people care, they want to do a good job, and as humans we are mostly smart enough to listen and understand no matter our age, education etc. yes, people have different personalities on a jury and sure some of them I’d not wanted to work with in “real “ life or hang out with, but we were all mature and tolerant enough to deal with it, respect each other and mostly respect the law, court (even if we did get all pissed off with time wasting and lack of reimbursement ) I honestly don’t believe that was exceptional, I’ve talked to many people who’ve said same thing.
Your analogy that “If you have a medical problem you don’t have a group of people representative of the population deciding what is wrong with you. ”, is a false one…the jurors are not there to decide what the disease is and the prognosis , they’re there to assesss which side of defence and prosecution truth telling. Validating the story. Just the same as why I as asked to attend every appoint my exh had with psychiatrist for his severe and enduring mental health issues, for 15 years, because the doctor wanted to hear both his patients perspective and the only other observer of the symptoms during the 6 months between appointment. That allowed psychiatrist to determined where truth lay. I didn’t need to be a psychiatrist myself to do that.
you are also not taking into account unconscious bias. We all have it. Even judges. Magistrates (hence why people have right to be heard by their peers in court) Police, barristers, solicitors, CPS . And even the sort of people who’d be willing to train as professional jurors . A jury is randomly selected. Literally 3 seperate machine random generators to actually get onto jury- the last one whilst you are standing in court down to last 15 selected to get to final 12. That way it is best protection for accused to avoid a prevalent unconscious bias of those listen to evidence and determine the truth. With all the training in the world a professional jury would not ever rid themselves of the risk of a prevalent unconscious bias.
it sure aint perfect. Miscarriages will occur, especially in cases of rape for instance, where the idea of professional jurors has often been touted and perhaps the strongest case exists. But that has never been touted on basis of a professional juror knowing more about the law on rape! It has been touted to counter the sadly prevalent unconscious and conscious bias in jurors (and general population) about believing rape victims and a huge tendency for jurors to victim blame etc.
apologies if you have served, and your experience was different in that you found your fellow jurors a bunch of bozzo idiots or prejudice ignoramuses. For me it was the one light in whole process that as hums we want the best for each other generally, want fairness, and are pretty intelligent