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I've just finished 7 days in court on jury service. As nobody knows my real name I presume that I am not going to get in trouble for mentioning it, although supposedly it's a criminal offence to detail anything which went on.
Honestly, the court system is a shambles, now that I've seen it from the jurors' perspective.
The jurors are treated like cattle; many of them spend much of their nominal 2 weeks on jury service sitting around for hours on end with nothing to do; the jury allowances are ridiculously low; the court food (and drink) is ridiculously expensive.
As an illustration, the daily subsistence allowance would pay for just over 2.5 cups of coffee per day - and no food.
The trial process was appalling too. We had a very poorly presented case, where the prosecution failed to submit as evidence any prosecution witness statements, meaning that the jury were unable to read these. Conversely, the defence submitted all of the defence witness statements, giving us far more confidence in the defence evidence.
Our jury was unable to reach a verdict, because it could not reach the necessary 10-2 majority. And that was because the 3 individuals who believed the defendant guilty didn't really understand the concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" - they seemed to believe that the defence had to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the prosecution witnesses were lying.
So, after 7 days of about 25 people's time, no verdict was reached and potentially there will be a re-trial - if the CPS don't determine that the case is a hopeless one primarily because the prosecution witnesses are so flaky.
There were numerous questions which the jury, with no prior knowledge of the case, picked up and which were not asked by either barrister - and hence, were not answered.
There were at least 6 errors in the indictment, most of which were picked up by the jury and few of which were first picked up by the barristers. Some of these were key, material facts. How on earth could this sort of thing go through the CPS, both barristers, and the court system without being picked up?
Honestly, the court system is a shambles, now that I've seen it from the jurors' perspective.
The jurors are treated like cattle; many of them spend much of their nominal 2 weeks on jury service sitting around for hours on end with nothing to do; the jury allowances are ridiculously low; the court food (and drink) is ridiculously expensive.
As an illustration, the daily subsistence allowance would pay for just over 2.5 cups of coffee per day - and no food.
The trial process was appalling too. We had a very poorly presented case, where the prosecution failed to submit as evidence any prosecution witness statements, meaning that the jury were unable to read these. Conversely, the defence submitted all of the defence witness statements, giving us far more confidence in the defence evidence.
Our jury was unable to reach a verdict, because it could not reach the necessary 10-2 majority. And that was because the 3 individuals who believed the defendant guilty didn't really understand the concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" - they seemed to believe that the defence had to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the prosecution witnesses were lying.
So, after 7 days of about 25 people's time, no verdict was reached and potentially there will be a re-trial - if the CPS don't determine that the case is a hopeless one primarily because the prosecution witnesses are so flaky.
There were numerous questions which the jury, with no prior knowledge of the case, picked up and which were not asked by either barrister - and hence, were not answered.
There were at least 6 errors in the indictment, most of which were picked up by the jury and few of which were first picked up by the barristers. Some of these were key, material facts. How on earth could this sort of thing go through the CPS, both barristers, and the court system without being picked up?
