Nice doing justice with you

You may have been wondering what has happened to ODHSNM recently. No, I was not co-opted to serve in the governments of either Greece or Italy. Much worse, I was doing jury service.

As such, I have not only some actual real world experiences to write about, but also some opinions that are supported by evidence – as opposed to the  steady diet of blind prejudice I usually feed you.

However, I must begin with a warning and a disclaimer. I am not going to tell anyone about anything relating to the deliberations of those juries I sat on, because it is an offence under the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

I am also going to be deliberately vague about when and where I did it and what cases I was involved in. Seems that blog accounts of the details of jury service are a bit sparse, and so even though I have a better grasp of the law in this area than some, I don’t want to go out on a limb and do or say anything dodgy (working from this broadly).

So, as a preliminary – while I await the input of those of my friends and readers who know the law better than me – here are some interesting factoids about jury service:

1. At the court I attended, probably about 50 new people got called up each week. Given that the usual term for jury duty is two weeks, that meant that at any one time there were about a hundred potential jurors locked up in a special waiting room, ready to be called. There is a LOT of waiting.
2. Whenever a trial is ready to start, 15 to 20 of the people get called out – apparently at random (more on the nature of "randomness" in the criminal justice system at a later date...). You may immediately be thinking, “hold on – not 12?” Well, you’d be correct. Those people then go up to the courtroom, where an official literally shuffles cards with all their names on, and the first 12 called out go and take their places. At this point, the counsel can reject any potential jurors they don’t like the look of – so this is the point that your swastika tattoos and copies of the Daily Mail come in most handy. Those rejected or not picked, get sent back to the holding pen.
3. Anyone who is on the electoral register and aged between 18 and 70 can get called up for jury duty. If you get a letter saying you’ve been picked, you can be fined up to £1,000 if you don’t reply to it within seven days.
4. There are nine lions on the Royal coat of arms. I counted them. Many times.

More will follow, pending legal direction.