The Jury: Murder trial

[Newtonianmechanics]

Is anyone watching this on channel 4?

www.radiotimes.com/tv/entertainment/the-jury-murder-trial-channel-4-experiment-explained/

The bald older juror looks like Jim Branning off of Eastenders.

I thought that too!

Not in my experience, no.

We were instructed not to form an opinion until all the evidence was presented.

Abs it also had to be approved by a judge after the defence presents their case first loss of control -ie is it legally sufficient for the jury to be allowed to consider the defence.

I was m impressed by the live theatre aspect of this. Obviously they can't screw up the acting as it would just break the jury experience somewhat -I mean people are crying!

Imagine being the deceased party having your case being used as some sort of social experiment. I've seen a lot of adverts for this show but decided against watching it, as I know it would p--- me off.

More research into juries needed it not allowed

So I very much hope that as well as the 2 groups we see in tv they actually have more controlled experiments also running. Students maybe wAtcjing it all "as live"

Sorry. Is needed as NOT allowed currently

Radio 4 Front Row Today at 7.15 had a segment (first 15 minutes) with the producer(?) of the show talking about how and why they put it together.

I agree.

Not seen the first episode, but we seem to have some information about the victim's past and state of mind, is there any info on his past life, married, children, how did that relationship end.

It appears the jury has access to her information but not his.

I think one of the jury summed it up by stating she was a 10 and he was a 7, he couldn't control her and she really wasn't in love with him, was it a marriage of convinience for her security.

I don't buy that you should be able to kill somone just because they don't love you enough, her temper was her frustration being with someone she didn't love.
He had no right to take her life, there is no excuse.

I don't care how good his character was before he met her, it only shows that he had not had someone to challenge him before, there were other options and choices available to him, his anger or loss of control is bollocks.

I don't believe this was justice.

I know.

Unconditional, only up until I don't get my own way by you loving me, even though I know you don't love me, and on top of that I need to control all decisions with what possessions I allow you to enjoy or change.

Oherwise I will kill.

I don't understand why this isn't explained to the jury at the very start. Then they'd be in a position to consider whether the evidence indicates that any of these components were present. As it is they have nothing but their prejudices to go on.

Some of them are still saying things like 'I don't understand how it can't be murder when he hit her like that.' To me that shows that they don't understand that it's not murder in certain circumstances, and it's their job to decide whether those circumstances were present.

How can we expect any group of people to decide anything on the basis of rules that haven't been properly explained to them? It's like asking me to referee an international football match on the basis that I've watched a few on the telly, so I can rely on my own ideas about what's right and wrong.

@MontyDonsBlueScarf

"How can we expect any group of people to decide anything on the basis of rules that haven't been properly explained to them? It's like asking me to referee an international football match on the basis that I've watched a few on the telly, so I can rely on my own ideas about what's right and wrong."

Exactly this! The football analogy is perfect 👌🏻

That's interesting. We were encouraged to discuss the case and our theories. I wonder if that's because it was actually very complex and they had made a mistake thinking it would be done in the usual two weeks. It took over two months. If we hadn't discussed it day to day we'd never have had such good recall of evidence shown at the start.

I wondered that. You'd think they very first thing they;d do would be to clarify exactly what constitutes murder, what manslaughter, what loss of control actually means.
The case I was on hinged on diminished responsibility due to temporary madness. Everyone's Day 1 thought was; you have to be temporarily mad to kill a total stranger, but it's not that straightforward.

I wonder if the police / prosecution asked why there was one of his hammers in the house in the first place. It was described as an 'industrial hammer' - sort of thing that he would had in his workshop.

It was, of course, the same question asked in the feminist cause celerbre case of Sally Challen, who also used a hammer to bash her husband's head in. (It seems she had brought the hammer with her in a handbag). That was also a 'loss of control' case - well, it was at the Court of Appeal, who ordered a re-trial (In the first instance, they played the diminished responsibility card).

Luckily for our Sally, the CPS couldn't be arsed with it all over again and accepted her plea of guilty of manslaughter due to loss of control. Luckily, as I think her defence team ( Clare Wade, was the lead Barrister - no Shit Sherlock) might have struggled with 54(1)(b) and (c). What a hoot. https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2011/

Having read details of court cases where murder victims have had the most awful lies told about them, their character destroyed by the lies of the defendant and his/her barristers, and further details of the defendant's other crimes coming out after the case is finished I certainly would be very considered in my judgement.
The tears of a defendant giving evidence or the answers given by them to the defence barrister's prepared questions wouldn't wash with me but they appear to with some of these jurors.

The programme is an interesting experiment though.

All the character references paint Helen as a psycho, gaslighter, controller. The kind of person that women write on here about and are told to LTB.

Why didn't John just leave her or end the marriage? I've seen him compared on another forum to Sally Challen and the woman who poured petrol over her abusive husband.

I'm sorry but it isn't the same for women. They often aren't able to leave.

Maybe I guess.

The whole of Twitter is full of people saying they were not allowed to discuss the case until all the evidence was presented, though!

We didn't have a 'jury room'. We were sent away at lunch and basically had to provide receipts for our sandwiches etc.

I went into this thinking it was a social experiment that we might learn from but on Front Row last night it was described as a reality series and that to me means it's more about entertainment than anything else. It does focus a lot on the personalities and stories of the jurors rather than the legalities, which would probably have us all nodding off.

The retired caretaker (?) who admitted in the first episode to have thrown things in the past - did his personality suddenly change after his wife hit him with her car? That's what I thought they were alluding to but there wasn't much detail. I know that's not the point of the programme but I would have been interested to hear a bit more detail about that.

I think this is the key point. I’m not sure the prosecution, having seen ep 3, made that argument strongly enough, or made the jurors clear on the definition of ‘loss of control’, and especially this idea that it might be relevant in terms of a momentary act (like the strangulation) but leaving the room, going outside for several minutes) and getting a more satisfying murder weapon in the process suggested a far more controlled anger.
But nonetheless given the amount of victim blaming going on would it have made a difference.
I found it really striking how the jurors were able to dehumanise the female victim so much in the way they spoke about her as a person and how she deserved what happened (asking for it etc) whilst totally humanising the male perpetrator who bashed in a skull with a hammer, he seems so kind, he loved her unconditionally etc etc. They worked so hard to empathise with him, and did so little to try to empathise with her. I wondered if they had taken a moment to imagine that she was a friend or a loved one, with MH difficulties and a challenging personality; would it be so easy to dismiss her bloody brutal murder as understandable, inevitable, and deserved.
So many glowing character statements offered for him, I think it would’ve been helpful for them to be reminded of the impact of this horrifying act on her children for example, again reminding them that she was an actual
person, who had been loved.

Sally Challen was certainly able to leave and leave she did. Mr Challen might well have been delighted but she then came back to kill her husband when she found out he still wanted to see other women - via a loss of control obvs. The Court of Appeal judgement recorded these facts:

"In the autumn of 2009 [Mrs Challen] left Mr Challen and moved into a property of her own nearby that she had bought using capital from an inheritance. She began divorce proceedings. Mr Challen then began to socialise with people he had met through a dating agency. [Mrs Challen] found it difficult to cope with the separation. Convinced that her husband was having an 'affair', she asked a neighbour to spy on him. In 2010 she found out how to access text messages and voicemails remotely and began to access his emails and voicemail messages. She looked at a dating agency website used by the deceased and looked up the names of women with whom he had contact. She checked his Facebook page. She became obsessive about trying to find out what the deceased was doing and with whom."

Yes I was intrigued about this - surely they didn't act out the entirity of a nine-day trial as if it were live? That would be a phenominal undertaking! But there's been a lot of hype around this as a social experiment and the two juries seemed to be reacting to it as if it were a real trial - e.g. judging the "defendent" based on the body language of the actor. Obviously they knew it wasn't a real trial but it seems to have been immersive enough for them to be able to suspend their disbelief. I'd love to know more about how they achieved this.

As @JoanThursday1972 writes "All the character references paint Helen as a psycho, gaslighter, controller........"

Well the defence would say that wouldn't they. ☹️

Indeed they would, to paraphrase good old Mandy.