The Jury- anyone watching?

I have watched all 3 so far. I would say it’s murder because he used 2 different methods and remembers seeing her face change colour after strangling her this shows his mind was clear at that point. I was also concerned by the character witnesses of course they would say nice things about him. Will there be any character witnesses for the victim. It appears that she has no voice in the trial which bothers me.
The juries are just seeing one side. A man crying, his family and friends saying how nice he is. This poor women is being portrayed as a control freak and mentally ill and no one is defending her.

I find that quite worrying. How do the 'experts' know that the verdict is wrong? Having sat on many trials (as a magistrate, and twice on a jury) I feel that the verdict reached is usually correct. Especially when the prosecutor reads out the 'previous' of the defendant!

I haven't watched, but from a crime perspective, strangulation is considered to be a very deliberate act, as it is hard physically, can take a long time, and involves close contact with the victim.

Stephania1954

I have watched all 3 so far. I would say it’s murder because he used 2 different methods and remembers seeing her face change colour after strangling her this shows his mind was clear at that point. I was also concerned by the character witnesses of course they would say nice things about him. Will there be any character witnesses for the victim. It appears that she has no voice in the trial which bothers me.
The juries are just seeing one side. A man crying, his family and friends saying how nice he is. This poor women is being portrayed as a control freak and mentally ill and no one is defending her.

Her friends and family have all said she was unstable.

I’ve done jury service twice both times for very violent cases which were long.The juries were similar to the programme and there was a lot of switching as more evidence was heard. I felt in both my trials that the result was right. One was a very aggressive female who attacked people with broken bottles. Her convictions were many and we found out afterwards that she attended our court daily from prison ! I’m so pleased we found her guilty.

If human beings are too unstable to come to an objective verdict then maybe they will use AI to sit on the jury in the future. I would be interested to see how AI handled this case (if that is possible).

Nothing like when I did jury service
We sat round a large table discussing it as a group and not individual clicks. And we had to bring our own food

Louella12

I would most certainly have gone with manslaughter.

I have done jury service twice. The most recent was 15 years ago. I don't know if is today's society but none of the jurors linked any of their life experiences with the cases.

We weren't allowed to eat in the allocated room where the 12 of us sat to discuss the case either.

We weren't allowed to eat in the room either but I'm guessing that they have to do that to keep the 2 juries separate

However unstable someone is maybe they don't deserve killing
Non fatal strangulation in a relationship is very often a precursor to the perpetrator going on to murder the victim. I see that t some point Jane Monckton smith will be speaking, (maybe she already has, am needing a bit of catching up as I did actually snooze off during one episode as it was late at night, she knows all about the timeline down to a murder.
If we assume that the strangulation was 'merely' to shut her up, and she would not have actually died from it, again have I missed the results of the PM which said what actually caused her death, then if she was still alive after he did it, actually getting up and getting a hammer from elsewhere and then doing what he did shows intent to me. It seems likely to me that he wanted to make sure that she was dead.
If I drove my car at someone trying to hurt them and they fell down and then I reversed and deliberately drive over them and this time they were definitely dead, I'd have committed murder I'm sure.

oodles It seems likely to me that he wanted to make sure that she was dead.
This is the problem with cases like this, people can only speculate that something 'seems like......' but what we need is evidence and proof. That is what the verdict should be based on, not what people feel might have happened.

It's a fascinating insight into an extremely difficult case. Obviously the actual deed is murder but the evidence about the personalities of the man and his wife are compelling and require consideration. The jury is also very interesting with one man being very loud and vocal while attempting to shut down other's opinions, in short, bullying. Some of the comments are thoughtful and perceptive and some just an opportunity for the usual suspects to take centre stage and talk about themselves. It does seem that the fetching of the hammer is a red flag.

The point of this is to show the flaws in the justice system. You can never really know the facts without proper evidence . The demographic of these juries was not balanced . The naivety that he seems a nice guy .. he smashed her with a hammer ! He may have been a different person behind closed doors.but he was maybe just weak and eventually snapped under pressure .

Also (on a roll now) when I did jury service the defence was so intent on complicating the facts and distracting us with totally irrelevant detail that most jurors fell for it .. I had to get them all to refocus . Plus the two men in the dock were actually in prison for another crime and one of them tried to leap out the witness box.. so really I had a strong intuitive hunch - no clear evidence back then - now there would be cameras .. it’s hard to get away with things today .

We found our guy not guilty, as we couldn't, beyond all reasonable doubt, say whether he was or not.

Sadly both my husband and I found this tv programme very close to what happens in the Jury room. We did our Jury service and both came away hoping that we were never subject to the whims of a Jury. There isn't even a level of intelligence or education required and so things are often mind boggling. I sat through 2 cases and the 2nd one ended on the last Friday of the fortnightly Jury service period. People were actually open about not wanting to be there for a third week (for various reasons) so were happy to go with the majority view regardless of the evidence they had heard. I was absolutely horrified.

I’m watching and finding it interesting. The jurors are obviously being very emotionally affected by the case, and by their fellow jurors’ reactions.
It’s surprising to me that their opinions are knee jerk reactions and not calmly reasoned.
It’s so distracting that they turn up each day wearing the same clothes. Can’t they go home and change?

I guess it's pretty obvious that some jurors will have to give way and go with the majority, otherwise how else could they ever reach a decision.

What I find absolutely terrifying is that the two juries came to a different verdict. I think that tells us that the jury system desperately needs changing, which was touched upon at the end.

HERE IS THE REAL TRIAL:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-21198156

I sat on a totally irrational jury once. The court covered a huge area so jurors could be called up anywhere from dodgy areas of East London to leafy areas of Essex.

So I ended up on a jury of 12 where 5 people had the perspective that the police always lie, 5 people who were adamant that the police never lie - then me and another guy (middle aged history teacher) that actually wanted to talk about the evidence.

The verdicts we reached were in my mind correct, but the process was wild with sandwiches being a crucial and scary issue in the deliberations of some jurors.

The one underlying impression that I had was that there must have been a whole load of evidence and backstory that they chose not to present or perhaps it had been ruled inadmissible. We the jury had to suspend our disbelief that the Hackney serious crime squad had nothing better to do than try and convict the accused for "driving while disqualified" - they seemed to have used a lot of resources - surveillance, multiple officers involved, some who happened to see the guy "driving past" but didn't manage to stop him ....

Yes I’m watching and finding the juries very disturbing. A lot of them bringing their own agendas to the decision making. Misogyny on display - and worryingly the murder victim seems to be more on trial than the perpetrator!

It was interesting to see plenty of casual misogyny given free reign and I felt one of the chaps in one team was a little bit of a bully. I was with the murder verdict as a second attack with a different method tipped it over for me. As in so many cases, it was in the interests of the defence to besmirch the victim as much as possible- inevitable but disturbing.

I watched it and thought it was an interesting experiment. Life experiences are obviously pivotal with some of the candidates, why wouldn't they be I guess it has to be said and of course that would have some bearing in their reaching the verdict they did. It did seem that both juries had some dominant characters, or maybe that's how it was edited. The man with all the rings certainly came across as one, and seemed to dominate the more reticent with his own point of view. I can't remember any of their names so I am describing them by appearance it did seem the black lady with the long hair had had her own unfortunate domestic issues in her life that had coloured her opinion and right from the start she wanted to go for "guilty" On the "guilty" jury I thought the older and younger black men were both very measured in their judgements of manslaughter when their jury delivered a 10/2 "guilty" verdict. I thought the very young student was a reflection of a person who hadn't really experienced life and possibly didn't appreciate how nuanced the case was, still at that very black and white stage. There were a couple of jurors on both sides, particularly an older lady who we didn't hear too much from, my overall opinion there were several resounding voices who appeared to dominate both procedural jury discussions. At times it all became over emotional and I thought the more dispassionate jurors were drowned out somewhat. Of course it was a highly emotive case, particularly as the accused was given to extended bouts of sobbing himself. I've never sat on a jury so I guess it's hard to say how one would react in a highly charged situation. The fact that two juries could reach different verdicts was quite sobering in that such serious outcomes can be reached on personal prejudices and the whims of random members of the public.

Jeremy Bamber received a guilty verdict, so I hope the jury were on the ball for that one. It was probably the most complicated trial ever and many people believe he was not guilty. He has been incarcerated since 1985, life imprisonment with a whole life tariff so I just hope this was the correct verdict.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bamber

Real trials can be complex and the evidence can be very difficult to understand. I think the jurors should:
1/ have a decent level of education
2/ speak English as their first language or at least be fully fluent.
3/ no criminal record and no serious trauma in their life

We have seen here that in coming to a verdict people go by their own experiences and instead of studying the evidence they work out what THEY would have done. They are not analytical in their judgement, they are emotional, and some of those jurors should not have been there.

Chestnut

Real trials can be complex and the evidence can be very difficult to understand. I think the jurors should:
1/ have a decent level of education
2/ speak English as their first language or at least be fully fluent.
3/ no criminal record and no serious trauma in their life

We have seen here that in coming to a verdict people go by their own experiences and instead of studying the evidence they work out what THEY would have done. They are not analytical in their judgement, they are emotional, and some of those jurors should not have been there.

Who decides the above though? In a flawed world you can never get perfection- I think there were some good ideas put forward at the end of the programme about how other countries do it, and one brief example of the Danes do it.

Point 1- education is importnat but if all the population are well educated (certainly not the case here in the UK) then this wouldn't be an issue. In Denmark they receive training which make a lot more sense.

Point 2- as far as I'm aware jurors have to fulfil this criteria, I don't know if translators are available and what the implications for this would be.

Point 3- eradicating serious trauma! How would you possibly do that? What if people don't want to make their business everyone else's business?

I also think people are forgetting this was television, not a serious court case- so the jury were not representative. However, I do think it ipens up some very necessary and important issues regarding our criminal justice system.

I definitely think guidance and training would be beneficial for jurors and if that were the case, at such time possibly the suitability of prospective people could be assessed, for example how dispassionate they are likely to be in assessing the evidence.

I don't necessarily think education and common sense go hand in hand, a person could be highly educated but some qualities that would be required in a jury situation are innate and don't necessarily correlate to education.t I do think all jurors need to be assessed for their basic levels of understanding as what is to be presented before them. I did think some of the jurors were so overwrought in the programme that they were unable to make the right, beyond reasonable doubt judgement, I think if there were training sessions possibly such individuals might have been weeded out. I can't imagine how awful it would be to sit on a jury in the most extremely distressing cases that come up involving children, for example The Moors Murders, I imagine such an experience would never leave you.