Anyone done any jury duty? (UK)

[chimp_spanner]

Got summoned for late January! Not really sure what to expect. Some people say it's incredibly dull, others say it's a really good experience to have.

Myself, hopefully it's the only time I'll ever end up in a courtroom but...I'm looking forward to seeing HOW exactly the justice system works in this country and if it's as whacky as critics say it is!

So, any of you guys/gals had the experience?

[AK DRAGON]

not sure about UK jury duty, though here it is very dull and boring. call every morning and find out if you are going and if your group gets called sit and do nothing till they call you or dissmiss you

[chimp_spanner]

Yeah I've heard people talk about 'groups' of jurors...still not entirely sure how that works. I guess I could do a bit of reading up on it.

Dull and boring though, you say? Just had to take a whizz on my excitement didn't ya

[Stealthtastic]

Ive heard it sucks ass and if you wanted to see a trial on your own time you can always go into court rooms seeing as most cases allow it unless theres a child involved (Canada)

[MF_Kitten]

i think it would depend alot on the case itself. if it's an interesting case, then... well, maybe the trial will be equally interesting?

who knows... it might just be a really interesting process! sure, it's no judge judy, but you get to see it in action, and you get to contribute actively.

[Esp Griffyn]

I have never been on a jury but I've written enough practise expert witness statements in various disciplines, and had enough education in law to realise that the whole process is incredibly boring. Unless you get something cool, like sentancing Gary Glitter to death you are unlikely to be blown away.

Even a relatively extreme crime like a murder will become dull and boring as you hear the facts of the case for the hundredth time, and listen to expert witnesses talk through their statements for an eternity as the defense try to understand it / try to find a way out / try to stall for new evidence and all of the other stupid things they do.

I would still like to do jury duty though; gives you paid time off work, and doing something boring but different for a few days is more exciting than doing something boring that you do every day. Yes, your employer legally has to pay you for the time you are on jury duty, and they can't take it out of your holiday allowance either.

[hairychris]

I haven't (hidden from the electoral role!) but have had a variety of friends who have.

One guy at work ended up spending a couple of weeks longer at it then the 3 that were scheduled, and ended up out of pocket on the whole thing because of travel and meal vouchers that didn't cover canteen costs! It was some fraud case that ended up not getting a verdict so he wasted his time.

Another friend basically spent 3 weeks sitting in a room in the Old Bailey not getting picked for cases... She wasn't massively impressed either.

[thesimo]

there was a good episode of curb your enthusiasm about Jury duty

[Fred]

I did it earlier on this year and had a fairly mixed reaction to the whole thing. I was lucky in that I was called to a new trial almost immediately after each previous one had finished, whilst there were some people who spent the entire 10 days sitting around on their arses, occasionally getting called down to a trial only to find out they weren't going to be part of the sitting jury. As a result, in the 11 days I ended up having to stay there for I sat on a total of 4 trials and was rarely left to my own devices.

I was also lucky in that the majority of those 4 cases were either interesting or (dare it be said) fairly entertaining. I had a GBH case, an attempted burglary one with one of the most fantastically implausible excuses I've ever heard, a child porn one which was fucking grim but fairly eye-opening and an offer to supply weed to an undercover policeman, again with a fantastic excuse. The GBH one was the only one that felt like a complete waste of my time, in that the incident took place 2 years ago, the CCTV footage showed absolutely nothing whatsoever and there was no way in which anyone could possibly have been convinced of the defendant's guilt based on the evidence we were shown.

As far as why it was frustrating is concerned, whilst not wanting to come across as snobbish or anything along those lines, it was quite a scary thought to look at some of the people called to service and think that they were going to be responsible for completely changing the course of someone's life. A couple of the other jurors there at the same time as me seriously, seriously struggled to take in some fairly basic facts about the cases, and others amongst them had some incredibly questionable views and biases. I would happily say the majority were far from being like that, but those few people did ring some alarm bells. It all felt fairly medieval at times.

As well as that, the bureaucracy of the whole affair, whilst understandably necessary, got incredibly tedious. Even though I was never really waiting around to be called (not for more than a few hours at any one time, that is), the amount of time actually spent in the courtroom per day is somewhat nonsensical. We'd be trooping in and out the whole time while some matter of law was cleared up, and the number of delays to the start of the trials was absurd.

That aside, I'm glad I did it, if only to have got it out of the way for at least another 2 years! Bits of it were definitely interesting, and there is a certain satisfaction to the knowledge that you've taken part in the justice system.

EDIT: Oh, and what ESP Griffyn said about the repetition of the evidence is incredibly true, too. The type of juror I mentioned earlier probably benefited from having such monotonous facts drilled into their brains quite so rigorously, but I think the rest of us all got fairly sick of it after a while.

[RenegadeDave]

I sat in on a jury 5 years ago. I kept getting summoned, but I kept getting excused because I was a student (at the time). Then they go smart and sent me a summons in late december, when school was out. Crap, no dodging this one.

So I go report to jury duty, get summoned in with 119 other prospective jurors to a screening in a freaking child molestation case. Immediately I think "lock this bastard up and throw away the key" and hint to that when they call my number and interview me. I go to lunch at the nearby sports bar, treat myself to three beers with lunch thinking for sure I was in the fast lane to being dismissed. Lo and behold, despite my alluding to my predisposition of condemning this man, I get selected as a juror. The case starts nearly immediately after lunch.

I sit on the panel for another three days, listening to all the testimony and the evidence. The girl who was bringing the man up on charges has three recorded testimonies and one live testimony. She gives her live testimony. Then the prosecutor plays one of the testimonies , and the defense plays the other two. Her testimony is literally different in every single instance. There were apparently two occasions on which this girl said the molestation took place and the stories never matched up. One of the instances took place in a tow truck when cab the accused's car broke down. The tow truck driver came in and testified and literally nothing the little girl said happened he could recall happening. Further more, the girl was born in the US to foreign parents, and obviously raised around US culture. The parents of both families involved were first generation Pakistani immigrants. They were incredibly formal and the defendant really didn't understand the judicial process. There were Saddam Hussein like outbursts from him until the judge had to threaten him to shut him up. Long story short: as sensational as her testimony sounded on all of her accounts, it was way too over the top sensational. I think i'm being too dismissive of the alleged victim and feel bad, it just didn't seem to fit to me.

Now comes time to deliberate. We go sit in jury room. 5 minutes pass, nobody says anything. I should mention that there are 7 female jurors (most mothers) and 5 males with a female alternate (also a mom). So I say "Ok lets go through this from the top, witness by witness"

"Are you going to be the foreman?"

"I'll do it unless anyone else has a great desire to do it. I really just want to get this ball rolling so we can get out of here."

So here I am, a 21 year old jerk college kid sitting on a jury as foreman with other adults double and triple my age.

We delivered a verdict in less than 45 minutes. I took a preliminary vote after the evidence was reviewed. Unanimously not guilty.

So we call the Bailiff in and tell him we've reached a verdict, go out into the court room and I get to deliver the verdict starting with the campy "We the people of the jury..." line that was in the educational video they showed us at our briefing/orientation and rendered him "not guilty" on all three counts.

The defendant at that point stands up and bows to the jury while proclaiming "Thank you American Justice System!"

It was boring, but it was greatly fulfilling to get that peek into the judicial system. I wouldn't want to do it more than once every five years.