Legally bland? Cherwell, 23 January 2004, p. 12.
Miranda Kaufmann delivers her verdict on jury service, a duty that isn’t as clear cut as it seems
The jury hearing evidence against Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal, must have a lot on their plate. They must look beyond the juicy details to ascertain the facts. Did the defendant deceive his victim, Berndt Brandes? Was Brandes aware of the gruesome implications of replying to Meiwes’s advert on the internet? Did he really consent?
Confronted with such conflicting information, juries must rely on common sense and gut feeling. Some cannot on even rely on that. In a 1994 murder trial, the jury, sent to a hotel for the night, drunkenly tried to contact the deceased using a Ouija board. The message was surprisingly blunt: “Stefan Young (the accused) done it. Vote guilty tomorrow.” The jury was dismissed, but the portents seemed to have been correct. A second jury at the Old Bailey convicted Young.
I served on three juries last August: two thefts; one false passport. No violence, no sex. However, the pressure we were under was enough to result in a particularly drunken night at a local pub once we had been dismissed. My powers of judgement felt inadequate. How could I tell who was lying? How could I be sure that I had made the right decision? The words I pronounced as forewoman would change someone’s life. When asked: “Guilty or Not Guilty?” the two phrases swum around my head in an alarmingly interchangeable fashion.
The evidence in the first theft case recalled to me a book called The Good Con Guide. Chapter 1 was entitled: “How to become a Millionaire in three working days” and described how to manipulate the delay in processing cheques. Having opened two bank accounts with £1 each, you write yourself a cheque from Account A and pay it into Account B, then vice versa, and repeat until a significant balance results. Of course, the Good Con always has a flight for South America booked for the fourth working day. The serious point here is that these days, it is even easier to defraud banks. The anonymity of multiple branches, call centres and internet passwords, mean it is possible to transfer large sums of money without actually having to talk to anyone face-to-face.
What worried me about these cases was that the people in the dock were seemingly vulnerable members of society. It sounds a stereotype, but none of them were white: one was living in a centre for unemployed young men; another was an immigrant. I feared that it was the unequal nature of our society that dictated that I was in the jury box while a girl my own age was found guilty of theft. If I was earning what she was earning, without great hope of improvement, I too would have been sorely tempted to steal the money. I could see any easy solution, but was comforted by the fact that the judge seemed sympathetic. 60% of those summoned to jury service don’t serve. Doctors, vets, MPs and judges, as well as peers, are currently exempt, and only last February were all members of the Royal Household except the Queen and her immediate family ruled eligible for jury service. But, even in such exalted company, jury service is still seen as something to be avoided, for instance the joke where a lawyer says to his client: “Today you will be judged by 12 people too stupid to avoid jury duty.”
But, my experience was quite the opposite. The people I served with, chosen at random from the electoral register, approached their duty responsibly and rationally, and I would have been happy for them to have passed sentence on me. So while there are many problems in the justice system, juries are not one of them. Our right to trial by jury should be upheld.
The jury hearing evidence against Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal, must have a lot on their plate. They must look beyond the juicy details to ascertain the facts. Did the defendant deceive his victim, Berndt Brandes? Was Brandes aware of the gruesome implications of replying to Meiwes’s advert on the internet? Did he really consent?
Confronted with such conflicting information, juries must rely on common sense and gut feeling. Some cannot on even rely on that. In a 1994 murder trial, the jury, sent to a hotel for the night, drunkenly tried to contact the deceased using a Ouija board. The message was surprisingly blunt: “Stefan Young (the accused) done it. Vote guilty tomorrow.” The jury was dismissed, but the portents seemed to have been correct. A second jury at the Old Bailey convicted Young.
I served on three juries last August: two thefts; one false passport. No violence, no sex. However, the pressure we were under was enough to result in a particularly drunken night at a local pub once we had been dismissed. My powers of judgement felt inadequate. How could I tell who was lying? How could I be sure that I had made the right decision? The words I pronounced as forewoman would change someone’s life. When asked: “Guilty or Not Guilty?” the two phrases swum around my head in an alarmingly interchangeable fashion.
The evidence in the first theft case recalled to me a book called The Good Con Guide. Chapter 1 was entitled: “How to become a Millionaire in three working days” and described how to manipulate the delay in processing cheques. Having opened two bank accounts with £1 each, you write yourself a cheque from Account A and pay it into Account B, then vice versa, and repeat until a significant balance results. Of course, the Good Con always has a flight for South America booked for the fourth working day. The serious point here is that these days, it is even easier to defraud banks. The anonymity of multiple branches, call centres and internet passwords, mean it is possible to transfer large sums of money without actually having to talk to anyone face-to-face.
What worried me about these cases was that the people in the dock were seemingly vulnerable members of society. It sounds a stereotype, but none of them were white: one was living in a centre for unemployed young men; another was an immigrant. I feared that it was the unequal nature of our society that dictated that I was in the jury box while a girl my own age was found guilty of theft. If I was earning what she was earning, without great hope of improvement, I too would have been sorely tempted to steal the money. I could see any easy solution, but was comforted by the fact that the judge seemed sympathetic. 60% of those summoned to jury service don’t serve. Doctors, vets, MPs and judges, as well as peers, are currently exempt, and only last February were all members of the Royal Household except the Queen and her immediate family ruled eligible for jury service. But, even in such exalted company, jury service is still seen as something to be avoided, for instance the joke where a lawyer says to his client: “Today you will be judged by 12 people too stupid to avoid jury duty.”
But, my experience was quite the opposite. The people I served with, chosen at random from the electoral register, approached their duty responsibly and rationally, and I would have been happy for them to have passed sentence on me. So while there are many problems in the justice system, juries are not one of them. Our right to trial by jury should be upheld.