Jury Law

Secrecy in a jury room
QUOTE
It would be "both inappropriate and undesirable" said Lord Slynn, "that there should be a public inquiry as to what happened in the jury room after the verdict has been given".
UNQUOTE
The Grauniad does not agree.

Jury Secrecy in Ireland
QUOTE
We also considered in the Consultation Paper whether it is desirable to seek to preserve secrecy for the deliberation process in which juries engage and, if so, whether that goal should be served by means of contempt proceedings. We pointed out that under the present law a juror may not give evidence in any proceedings – including an appeal from the jury's verdict – as to what took place in the jury room and why the jury came to its verdict and that only the most limited exceptions to this exclusionary rule are permitted.....  we concluded that it is beyond argument that there could be no absolute rule of secrecy.
UNQUOTE
This Irish paper reads much like an English offering. The subject seems to get little attention.

 

A Libertarian View Of Juries And Bad Government
QUOTE
Abstract: No one should ever be allowed to serve on a jury in England unless he can read and write English............

We know that the authorities hate the whole jury system. Its advantage is not that juries are inherently more suited to deciding guilt and innocence than a judge sitting alone. This being said, there are few cases of gross incompetence by juries, and juries never sit long enough to become as case hardened as judges and magistrates. The advantage is – and always has been – that, before they can hurt any one of us, the authorities need to find twelve other people like us to agree that we should be hurt. Throughout English history, the jury has been the one most effective shield that individuals have had against oppression by the State. From Bushell's Case (1670), to the trial of the Seven Bishops (1688), to the treason trials of 1793, to any number of malicious prosecutions in the twentieth century, it has been juries that have checked the authorities.

During my own lifetime, trial by jury has been systematically weakened. In the 1960s, juries were removed from most civil cases, and majority verdicts were introduced in criminal trials. In the 1980s, the right of peremptory challenge was taken away from defendants. In the present century, the rule against double jeopardy has been overturned – so that an acquittal by a jury can be overturned and a person tried again for the same offence. There has been, throughout this time, a slow transfer of crimes from juries to magistrates. Very recently, it has been made possible for any crime whatever to be tried by a judge sitting alone, if the authorities can “prove” that a jury might be intimidated by the friends of a defendant...........

Because trial by jury is so important, we denounce all efforts to destroy it. We certainly believe that no one should be allowed to serve on a jury in England unless he can be shown to be literate in English. We believe that every person summoned for jury service should be tested for his ability to read and write English to a reasonable level. It is another argument, but we will also mention our belief that every juryman should be told of his right to acquit in the face of the evidence if he regards any particular law as illegitimate.
UNQUOTE
Doctor Gabb gets it splendidly right just as Her Majesty's Government mounts a malicious prosecution against Englishmen because and only because the oik they are accused of killing was a black.

 

Lords hand new rights to jury whistleblowers UK news Says The Guardian
QUOTE
It [ sic - try they ] advises troubled jurors that they can raise doubts about the safety of criminal convictions, even post-trial, so long as there is a clear intention to avoid injustice.

Until now jurors concerned about the conduct of the jury itself have been told they can raise concerns with the judge before a verdict is passed, but they received no clear direction about what they could do after the trial.

Yesterday's ruling lists a variety of actions a juror can take without becoming vulnerable to prosecution for contempt of court.

It says that while jury-room issues can still be raised with the trial judge or with the appeal court, jurors can also safely alert the judicial authorities by contacting the clerk of the court or the jury bailiff, or even by sending a sealed letter to the court via an outside agency such as the Citizens Advice Bureau.

But the law lords' ruling also firmly upheld the principle that secrecy of deliberations within the jury room should remain sacrosanct.

They dismissed a landmark appeal by a juror, Keith Scotcher, who wrote an anonymous letter to the mother of a convicted defendant alerting her to alleged improprieties within the jury room.
UNQUOTE

 

Jury Goes On Strike After 21 Months Of Their Time Is Wasted
QUOTE
The abandonment of the corruption trial of seven defendants on the personal decision of the director of public prosecutions and the attorney general may lead to the abolition of juries in long fraud trials, a move that would be bitterly contested.

One lawyer in the case said the prosecution of the businessmen and London Underground executives was a "scandal" because it was so badly handled.

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, said last night that he had asked Stephen Wooler, chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, to launch an inquiry in the collapse of the case.

Lord Goldsmith said: "This decision will cause great public disquiet as it causes me considerable disquiet. Most serious allegations have not in the end been brought to a final conclusion. Very considerable public money has been expended. Much time for a jury and for judge and defendants has been expended. It is important to learn what lessons we can."

Two businessmen were accused of bribing London Underground executives over contracts and payments to build the £3bn Jubilee Line extension, then the largest civil engineering project in Europe. They were accused of handing over cash in brown envelopes and providing prostitutes to get "inside" information. But six of the seven on trial were formally acquitted yesterday. One man has pleaded guilty.

The trial's mounting problems were concealed by a gagging order. This prevented publicity for more than five years in total.

The collapse is estimated to have cost the state more than £14m in legal fees alone.

The jury numbers had already fallen from 12 to 10 yesterday, after two had to be discharged for personal reasons. Five other jurors were kept on despite having personal problems. Last week, it was heard in open court that one had refused to continue unless his financial difficulties were resolved. The juror did not turn up yesterday and Patrick Upward QC for the crown said the juror had "understandable concerns that he feels unable to continue with his duties".

Another was promised that she could get married this June and go on honeymoon for six weeks. But it became clear the trial would not end by then.

Chris Sallon QC told the court: "Jury members, both individually and collectively, expressed concern and anxiety about their financial circumstances. They have complained of hardship and the level of compensation."

Retired jurors received no compensation and others only got limited payments for loss of earnings and childcare.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs rushed through special pay rises last November in an attempt to keep the trial on the road. Lord Falconer's department doubled the possible maximum payments to £200 a day. A spokesman for the department said: "When the difficulties in this trial came to our attention, a review was already under way. The difficulties made it clear to us that the financial circumstances of jurors in very long trials needed urgent attention."

The state of mind of the jury became so sensitive that the Legal Services Commission refused to reveal what the defence lawyers were being paid. Legal aid was disbursed at the top rate of £180 an hour for case preparation and £600 a trial day to QCs.

The payments were heavily restricted under government cost-cutting rules, in what are known as VHCCs - very high cost cases - which eat up much of the legal aid budget.

But Ruth Wayte, the commission's legal director, told the Guardian that if the jury had realised how much the lawyers were getting, that too might have led to them "refusing to continue to participate". The jurors would feel "resentment and anger", one counsel told the court.

Legal aid was dwarfed by the cost of private fees paid by two defendants, Stephen Rayment and Mark Woodward-Smith, who hired the QCs Nicholas Purnell and Julian Bevan at an estimated rate of £3,000 a day each. More than £2.2m was set aside by their company, the Systech Group, to fund their defence up to March 2004.

Two of the seven defendants fell ill during the trial. One had only given five days of testimony since last October. Barristers also fell ill, two with scarlet fever.

The trial began in June 2003. Originally estimated as likely to last six to eight months, it looked likely to wend on throughout much of this year.

The first arrests were as long ago as 1997. After the charges were brought by British Transport police, in February 2000, the media were initially bound by normal reporting restrictions from discussing the case until it came to trial.

When the trial proper opened, Judge Ann Goddard QC imposed a further blanket ban under the 1981 Contempt Act, to protect linked trials.

The head of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Robert Wardle, believes that traditional methods no longer work in long fraud cases. He wants early plea bargains and the removal of juries.

In what was claimed to have previously been the longest British jury trial, Peter Griffiths QC last year gained an acquittal against the SFO after 13 months. His chambers say that trial was "one of the finest examples of how a jury can, and should, continue to try serious fraud cases".
UNQUOTE
The judge let time wasting liars have their fun at  £180 an hour for case preparation and £600 a trial day to QCs. Defence side were getting £3,000 a day each. It was like Christmas every day. Jurors were starved. They didn't matter. The Judge would have been doing much better than them.

 

Jury Takes Two Hours To Find Black Murderer Not Guilty  [ 18 June 2021 ]

See the face, know the guilt
QUOTE
Lots of events in the Southeast are celebrating the first anniversary of the Racial Reckoning: keep that spirit alive! For example, from the Hilton Head Island Packet:

Man who told police he fatally shot ex-Hardeeville fire chief in 2017 found not guilty
BY LANA FERGUSON
MAY 27, 2021 01:15 PM,

Although Devon Dunham confessed to fatally shooting former Hardeeville volunteer fire chief Ernest Martin Stevens in a public parking lot in 2017, a Jasper County jury found him not guilty of murder Thursday.

Dunham breathed an audible sigh of relief through his face mask after hearing the verdict and softly fist-bumped his attorney.

The jury deliberated less than two hours...............

Gun violence ushered in the Memorial Day weekend in South Florida when dozens of shots were fired outside another gathering in Miami’s Wynwood area. The shooting late Friday killed one person and injured six others.

“Gun violence ushered in the Memorial Day weekend” — no evasive use of the passive voice there! The Associated Press is telling us exactly who did what: “Gun violence” is the subject who acted, “ushered in” is the verb phrase of what Gun Violence did, and “the Memorial Day weekend” is the object that Mr. Violence did it too.

Yeah, if you watch the local if-it-bleeds-it-leads TV newscast, this was another African-American party drive-by shooting in accord with Sailer’s Law.
UNQUOTE
Trust the media? Not me, not ever. Was it a black jury? Did they vote tribal?