The Jury- anyone watching?

The jury system does need to be looked at. Two groups of people who heard the same evidence have come to different verdicts and that is a problem. One group was pressurised by a man whose mission was to get everyone to agree with his opinion. The other group had to compromise but personal experience played a big part in decision making in both groups. We need to look at how it works in places where there is no jury involved.

Training sessions will help to identify those who might be unable to understand the evidence for whatever reason, or who may be too emotional to come to an analytical decision, either just their nature or maybe trauma in their life which resurfaces when they are faced with someone else's trauma. It's very difficult, but every attempt should be made to find suitable jurors especially when murder is involved.

I agree that education and common sense are definitely not connected, but there must be a good level of education involved in order to understand what may be very complex evidence.

As things are, with the jury having no training, the foreman should not be one of the jurors! The foreman should be a trained person who will give everyone a fair hearing and stop any bullying. If the foreman is one of the jurors there's a good chance they may direct people to vote their way, or be unable to control some of the stronger characters.

What about having jury service as a career? If people are well trained, intelligent and analytical by nature they could apply to be professional jurors. I don't think that random, untrained people off the street are ever going to give a fair verdict, for all the reasons we've seen here. We have professional judges and barristers, why not the jury?

I did feel that the juries would have benefitted from an objective chair/foreman with legal knowledge to contribute and who could deflect the personal experience stories and get them to concentrate on the law. What exactly did they have to prove beyond reasonable doubt? - what does reasonable doubt means in this context? - what might be expected of an "ordinary" person?

I haven’t done Jury service thank goodness. My DH has done it twice and DD once. Both had rapes. DD has been excused from jury service as the case was harrowing involving under age rape of a girl. DD hasn’t been the same since suffering with mental health - I think she was 18 or 19 at the time.

I was always in the manslaughter group not because I don’t think he murdered her but I don’t think he murdered her with intent however the programme was very interesting but if that’s how juries work I think I d rather be tried without one
Some had their own addenda completely, sone were naive or black and white, some were dominant and bullying, some held back and went with the crowd

I see in the real trial he was convicted of manslaughter

I liked the idea of the Danish way where the are trained and pain for 12+months work sounds much more relevant

Just read this on another site.
Quote:
In America juries are required to complete a questionnaire prior to jury selection. For example if the case involves sexual abuse anyone who has been abused or known someone abused is removed from selection. They are told if they falsely declare and it is subsequently found out they will be subject to sanction. It can also lead to a retrial. It's not perfect but it's done to prevent as much as possible bringing personal experience into jury deliberations.

I have served on a jury with case lasting 2 weeks. This “re-enactment” was very flawed in many ways but just confirmed my view that the jury system is outdated, does not deliver justice and should be replaced by a better system.

Jurors bring too much personal baggage and prejudice to their decision making and do not understand the law.
Normally the judge will give direction in his summing up but this didn’t happen in the tv programme.

I would have liked to have heard the judge’s summing up. I wonder why this was omitted? Because there were different outcomes?