Jury of your peers
There are books on, for example, ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’. Shouldn’t there be a manual on ways to elect a jury foreperson, and on how to conduct deliberations? In the second of two articles, an anonymous juror gives an insight into jury service
A Courts Service staffer tells of heated disagreements between some juries – with jurors refusing to talk to each other, refusing to be in the same lift, storming out. In short: all sorts.
It’s the human condition, and it happens. You have to think that maybe those jury deliberations weren’t conducted in a sensible manner, if proceedings were allowed to descend into feuds and enmity.
And that probably comes down to the foreperson of the jury. Pick the wrong personality to act as ‘captain’ (when they probably should be thinking of themselves as chair or facilitator) and you likely have a problem. But this is the first thing strangers do when thrown together – and relatively little consideration goes into it.
Someone says: “Who wants to be foreperson?” and another says, “I’ll do it.” A third remarks, “Grand, so,” and everyone laughs, somewhat nervously.
The first potential piece of tension has wonderfully dissipated. But think about it a little more. It is very hard to overthrow, psychologically, a person who asserts themselves when put at the top of a pyramid. If they turn out to a nutcase, how would a mutiny by the ‘common-sensers’ be organised?
Often a person who pushes themselves forward – especially in a situation where most people would be glad to pass on taking responsibility – turns out (surprise, surprise) to be pushy. The clue is in their eagerness to take up the job, but, once installed, it can ruin the experience of others.
It may be that jury minders could issue guidance before the dozen is left to its own devices in coming up with a nominal leader.
The same might be said for ways of arriving at a consensus, such as procedural options for conducting votes.
Should it be a show of hands, or a secret ballot (easy to organise with notebooks and pens, but time consuming).
Of course, juries are asked to use their common sense in deciding on the evidence, but asking them to organise themselves, without a page or two of suggested methods, could lie behind some perverse verdicts (where exhausted members are ultimately defeated by a strong-willed foreperson), or deliberations that descend into internecine warfare and name-calling.
There are pregnancy-advice books (for example, What to Expect When You’re Expecting) – why not a manual on possible ways to elect a foreperson, and possible ways to conduct deliberations?
Such a menu might be helpful, once couched in a non-directive and neutral fashion, and must surely have been introduced in some other countries? If it saves one jury from unnecessary internal friction (quite apart from the matter of judging the evidence), then surely it will have done its job.
Who killed cock robin?
In our case, we had a round-robin of the table so that everyone could introduce themselves – first names only. It immediately engendered both a sense of trust and of togetherness.
There might be juries where anonymity is taken to such extremes that people withhold their names from each other.
That can’t be good for a bunch of people who will be like castaways on a desert island, cut off from much that is normal for the duration of a trial. Again, a black-book suggestion that juries initially individually introduce themselves to each other could go a long way.
None of this intrudes on the jury’s duties and responsibilities, yet there is such a vacuum of information about what goes on in a jury room that juries might be assisted in first getting themselves set up in the right way to address a case.
Disagreement should be on interpretation of the evidence, and never between one person and another, for instance. This is called ad hominem argument (which, of course, is all over social media – but juries are exposed to social media), which boils down to playing the man or woman, and not 
the ball.
When there is an issue throwing up conflicting points of view, juries must act in looking afresh at that item of evidence, and not get suckered into a personality contest.
This is where a good chairperson is essential, in redirecting the focus back onto the facts instead of the faces. Criticism must be of the evidence, not the individual. Of course, I would say that ours was an exemplary jury, full of love and laughter…
Ding dong dell
And then the days comes when there are closing speeches.
Suddenly the judge is looking you square in the eye and summing up the evidence. The charge is outlined again, and its definition in law.
We are the judges of fact, and it is up to the prosecution to prove its case – not, as in civil cases, on the balance of probabilities, but to a higher standard. That’s ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, which the judge is not going to define because it’s an impossible task.
So, we are also the judges of a ‘reasonable doubt’ – and there seems to be two elements to that: a doubt being where something is not proven; and it being a doubt that can be reason for acquittal. In other words, it being a cornerstone or lynchpin of a case, rather than a stray cracked brick in the prosecution’s edifice.
And that’s it – out you go. One of the last things said to us was about ‘doubt’, itself a cloudy concept, and now we must reach unanimity.
Ask 12 people what they are going to have for a drink, and the order is inherently unlikely to be a dozen pints of Guinness. But it’s over to us.
A hunting we will go
This is where it has all been leading – and folks have their game faces on. Thankfully, we explored ways of doing this earlier, during one of our waits while legal argument was going on in our absence.
The foreperson said they would do a tour of the table when sent out, asking for initial opinions, with themselves last.
It was to be an exploration, each person speaking as long or as little as they liked without interruption, to be followed by an initial show of hands that would be indicative only – not definitive. Then we would hash out points that came up, sorting them out before the first fully serious vote.
As this was being outlined again, one juror suggested a secret ballot, with pages torn from notebooks and thrown into the centre of the table. While this would have, undoubtedly, heightened the drama, there was little enthusiasm 
for it.
The foreperson made the point that secret ballots may be inimical to achieving unanimity. After all, reaching consensus becomes more difficult when you don’t know who the holdouts are.
And so, we plunged into the tour – and the first speaker, to the left of the foreperson, was a ‘science’ type. They were quickly analytical, foregrounding some salient points, and going on to declare a personal verdict, which hadn’t been asked for, but which followed the logic of their analysis.
Little boy blue
This was a good start and looked fair to set the tone – until we reached the third speaker. This juror liked the sound of their own voice, as had been noted earlier.
A strong personality, the juror talked about going back into court and asking for a clarification of ‘reasonable doubt’. Well, we weren’t having that.
“We have to be 100% sure, lads,” they added – which was just not true.
The foreperson performed a holding manoeuvre (figuratively, of course) by emphasising that we were 12, and doubt would have to be proportional to all views expressed.
With that slight glitch, we moved on. The next speaker was clear-cut: no doubts. Like a vox pop after a football match, folks had all witnessed the same thing, and similar themes emerged.
There had been one curveball a little earlier: during the closing defence speech, the defendant suddenly broke down. Just a sob or two, but it was unsettling; a reminder that a real human being was on trial.
An earlier witness had also reached for the Kleenex, but their future was not in play. So, the seriousness now impinged on us.
Hickory dickory dock
But sympathy for the person’s plight was not a reason to let emotion intrude, which is also important in the jury interactions. We had to be dispassionate and imper-sonal, it being said by our foreperson 
that we were debating the evidence, not each other.
And in looking at the facts, the terms of the charge itself were also helpful. The one-count accusation was bound in a three-year timeframe of alleged occurrence. It meant that anything that fell outside of this band was strictly not relevant.
Something had happened two years earlier that might be called motivational, but when you come to think about it, cause is unimportant to the simple question of whether the claimed crime had been committed by the defendant. If we found that it was so perpetrated, then any sympathy or mitigating circumstances were a matter for the judge in sentencing.
Then to the show of hands, with the voluble juror suggesting a third option of abstention, which wasn’t a bad idea.
The vote was put first in a manner favourable to the defendant: ‘Who thinks the defendant is not guilty, and/or that the State has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt?’
‘Voluble’ and a younger member of the jury put their hands up. The other ten voted ‘guilty’. No abstentions.
Then ‘Younger’ said they might have abstained, because they were thinking ‘80% guilty to 20% not guilty’ in their heads.
Okay, so we had one-and-a-bit jurors away from the crowd. And is 20% ‘reasonable doubt’?
We decided at this point to have a bit of a personal think, so the foreperson sought an early lunch. Once deliberating, we had to have the judge’s permission to go for a meal, so we trooped back into court. In letting us go, we were told not to discuss the case over lunch, so that was a bonus.
Pop goes the weasel
Back in the room, the break had done the world of good. There were contributions of some specific points, and ‘Younger’ said that now they were satisfied – that 20% doubt had evaporated.
That left ‘Voluble’ – and a strategic question had been asked of the 
jury-minder when we came back into the room: “How long would a judge typically wait before seeking a majority verdict?” This disclosed a key response: “Several hours.”
‘Voluble’ knew the writing was on the wall, but also graciously said that examining some specifics had helped them come round.
So, then we had a binding vote on a show of hands – and there it was: 12 hands in the air.
We had achieved unanimity after two hours and 25 minutes, including the munch over lunch, when the case was also chewed over in our heads.
The foreperson opened the door and told our jury-minder those words of time-honoured tradition: “We have a verdict.”