After the fiasco of the Vicky Pryce trial is trial by jury under threat? Are British people becoming too stupid to act as jurors? Do we have too many potential jurors who do not really understand English? Should would be jurors be givewn a basic English and IQ test before appointment? The Times feature is today (as I guess others will have) but I cannot link to there (subscription website).

You're doing this for a giraffe aren't you.

No it's not. That jury was found to be unfit and was dismissed. If it shows anything, it's that the system works.

It also adds to the general sense that there are a lot of very stupid people out there. Let's face it, the entire Mantel debacle, whereby people were perfectly happy to be whipped into an ignorant frenzy by the [iSun[/i and the [iMail[/i, both of which lied about the original lecture, was hardly enough to make you feel good about general standards of intelligence in this realm.

You can read this though and having done jury service myself and sat on two trails (one as foreman) it is spot on:

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/20/vicky-pryce-jury-did-its-duty[/url

In particular these comments in the article:

[i"If you haven't done jury service you haven't lived. Outside of family life, it's one of the most important things you could ever do. The structure, order and even-handedness of the trial system are remarkable. If you were ever sent for trial you should count yourself lucky to have it heard here, and before a jury."

"In my limited but freshly minted experience, jurors take their responsibilities very seriously. They pay attention. They wrestle with the facts. They work as a team. They ask good questions, in good faith, in an attempt to get to the truth. In turn, I and my fellow jurors were looked after very well by the court staff. We were treated with courtesy and respect, and thanked sincerely for our efforts."
[/i
Mirrors my experience down to a tee. This bit [i"The structure, order and even-handedness of the trial system are remarkable." [/i is most definitely true.

It will be a wish to do their duty as jurors that led them to ask the questions they did. I can imagine several of them had opinions as to what "reasonable doubt" meant but if they could not explain this to their colleagues who were struggling with the concept the foreman did the right thing in passing the questions on.

It is VERY impressive in my opinion how the courts go about their business and how you as jurors are treated and you feel duty bound to do the right thing which as the article above concludes:

[iMr Justice Sweeney concluded his guidance to the Southwark jury with these words: "If, after further consideration, you find yourselves in a position where you are simply not able to agree, then you must of course have the courage to say so." That is what they did, and in so doing they performed their civic duty admirably.[/i

Somebody on Radio 4 this morning, I didn't catch who it was, suggested that there should be some juries in some cases that are studied during and questioned after the case so as to determine if there are similar issues with juries across the board. Apparently there is currently no way of finding out if, for instance, juries often struggle with the concept of reasonable doubt or if juries are allowing personal feelings/prejudices etc to affect their decisions. Of course there are always going to be one-off cases but I think it would be a good idea to try and find out if there are recurring issues, as I would imagine most people on a jury haven't been on one before.

I've no doubt about the sincerity of the jurors, but how could anyone ask: 'Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it either from the prosecution or defence?'

In the mid-1970's, I was called for jury service.
One guy on the jury could tell, apparently, that the defendent was guilty from the way she stood in the box.
Upon being reminded by other jurors that part of the oath we had sworn was "according to the evidence", his response was that, to him, that WAS evidence and, anyway, the police wouldn't have brought it to court if she wasn't guilty.

In the end we reached a majority "Not Guilty" verdict despite him ... but I can imagine that we could easily have reached the stage where we would have needed to send a note to the judge, if only to to get him to make clear to that one guy that it was not "evidence".

It doesn't take an entire jury to get a jury dismissed.

I can well imagine the other 11 jurors wondering the same thing when someone asked this question but I am not sure I see your point.

Process may confuse jurors as well as really complex cases (fraud for instance) but that goes way beyond such things.

So what do you suggest should have happened?

Could it be that the composition and ethnic background of this jury may have contributed to the list of questions sent to the Judge?

Should we put it down to simply an unfortunate juxtaposition of people, a tad lacking in what was required from them? Or perhaps we need to look at raising the bar on Jury service, from the original qualify standard of simply owning property, to one where there is at least a basic understanding of the English language?

I was tempted to put " a reasonable understanding of the English language," but I suspect some clever clogs would be asking for a definition of reasonable.......

After a million trials and a billion jurors doing invariably an exceptional job, ONE jury is discharged for incompetence and you want to scrap the entire system.

You couldn't make it up.

Look back at my example from the mid 1970's ... the guy I'm talking about there was British, not from any detectable ethnic background other than British and he could speak better than "reasonable" English ... but completely misunderstood his duties and the meaning of the word "evidence".

It didn't take long for one of the obvious candidates to find a race aspect, did it?

Given that most – if not all – of the internet responses to the Hilary Mantel business that I have seen seem to have been from white Brits (or Americans), there's hardly a dearth of wilful stupidity around without worrying about playing the 'ethnic' card.

It's quite interesting to ask how other countries manage to have a decent judicial system.

Mind, what would help is (somehow) improving the general standard of public discourse in this country. Although that would mean the majority of the media stopping deliberately dumbing down to grab the largest share of the market possible.

In the specific case of accepting your husbands speeding points, and with the proviso that I haven't a clue how far the range of evidence went, its a fair question to ask how far the "reasonable doubt" issue should be stretched when you are dealing with a specific offence that depends upon the defendant admitting guilt rather than the state proving it - if you've ever seen some of the "evidence" gathered by speed cameras then you'd realise what I mean.

Having said that this case is a beautiful paradox, she accuses him of doing something which he denies and in doing so drops herself in it too, then he admits doing the thing that she accused him of but they can't find a jury to convict her of dropping herself in it - all we need now is for him to get off the hook and we can tie it all up in a nice big parcel with a big pink bow and file under "too confusing for a jury"

Huhne is German for chicken. Chris - is it really you??

To be honest they may as well make up their own story when you see some of the evidence and defences put forth!

I think these sort of juries are probably common but in this case it was newsworthy. I did a bit of jury service at the ' Bailey a few years ago and on one of the cases I was involved in some of the jurors were a joke. Rather like this case we had to go back two or three times to have simple questions answered because of a couple of stupid / over-anxious jurors. The judge had carefully explained the points in question and me an AN Other-Juror tried to explain things and what the judge had said but no we had to reconvene. Bearing in mind they stick another case in the Court while the jury deliberates it was really embarassing having to reconvene with all the participants being reassembled on such minor points. Judge started to get sarcastic. Some of the points made by jurors during deliberation were beyond belief - one anxious woman in particular argued that as the judge had been careful to say that to convict our minds had to be made up beyond reasonable doubt then as she hadn't been there to witness the alleged crime she nust have doubt! Another woman then agreed and things spiralled downhill. They could not seem to see that if they'd been there they would have been witnesses and not jurors and that therefore no one could ever be convicted! Then they were worried if they found the defendant guilty because it was a serious offence he might get locked up for a while! I pointed out that the judge was responsible for sentencing and he was somewhat more experienced than us.

When he was eventually found 'innocent' the judge was very sarcastic saying something like he was glad we had been so careful in reaching such a well thought out verdict. Defendant was "over the moon" and practically in shock and was thanking us. Alleged victim's family were rather abusive.

How droll Ms Mintballs. Wilful stupidity indeed!

Perhaps you should take a moment or several to try and understand that it is not the pigmentation of one's skin , rather the social/ cultural characteristics as well as ancestry, which contribute to ones ethnicity.

That aside, the composition of this Jury was 8 women and 4 men, and at least some of them appeared to have only the faintest grasp of what the Judge was saying. Which raises the very valid questions posed earlier.....is the present British Jury system adequate for the 21st Century, or could it be improved, or was this simply an unfortunate case of 12 extremely thick people?.

And could one qualifying improvement not be, that a basic understanding of the English language be a pre requisite before serving on a Jury?

Oh, I am very well away of that. But it's a bit complex really for a short retort to someone trying to bring the issue of race/ethnicity into the equation.

Translation: "At least 10 of the other 11 jurors disagreed with me, so they're all nuts, because I am always right."

Some (certainly on this jury) are too stupid to serve.

I was once told by a women I did some work for, who was a magistrate that 'in her experience' the police never lie



Wonder how many innocent people she sent down