Jury service - Day 1

I've spent a fair amount of time preparing for my jury service by familiarising myself with court procedure, reading what little I could find about the experience of other jurors and even watching the two recent trial documentaries on TV. So I was completely unsurprised by the sheer amount of waiting involved. I arrived just before 9.15 as instructed, and waited. Around 9.45, they registered all jurors, and explained a little of the administration involved with jury service (expense claims and lunch cards and the such) and we got to watch a brief video detailing some of the forthcoming attractions. Then we waited. And waited. At some point in the morning, one batch of 15 names was called out for a jury selection, and just before lunch, another. That was 30 out of the 100 or so people gathered who actually did anything the entire morning. The rest of us? We waited, of course.

It sounds far more dreary than it actually was, though. There was a choice of waiting area, depending on whether you wanted conversation or quiet - I elected to go where it was cool, which happened to be the quiet room - and there was a canteen for meals or a variety of snacks. Being prepared, I had a selection of books to get through, as well as my DS, and managed to polish off the book I'd started en route to the courts¹ that morning by lunchtime.

Not very long after lunch, there was another round of juror calls, and this time my name was among those called. Fifteen of us were led in, and I was one of the twelve who stayed to decide the case. We were dismissed just after 4 and told to return for 10 tomorrow to continue. Those are hours I could get used to!

Obviously, there'll be nothing here about any of the cases I sit on until the cases are closed, but I can talk about generalities in the interim. It was interesting that we were provided with a pencil and a single A4 sheet of paper on which to take notes. I would seriously have thought we'd get pens and pads. As the building is not purpose-built, the courtroom we're in is fairly small and not at all what you might expect from television drama, but it seems to serve its purpose well enough. We're sat almost directly behind the court stenographer, who is actually in charge of recording the proceedings not by writing or typing anything, but by managing the tape (yes, TAPE) recording of the trial. It was a little distracting to have the flickering light of the sound level indicators flashing away in front of us, I have to say. The seats are a little too far away from the table to take notes comfortably, which didn't seem to bother my fellow jurors unduly, since they weren't taking all that many notes, content to sit back and watch the trial unfold. I, on the other hand, ran out of paper. Probably unnecessary, all that note-taking, but I figure I'd rather have it all down than trust my recollection of testimony. I'll definitely need to ensure I have more than a single sheet for tomorrow's full day.

I never really got to talk to anyone. It seems a little moot to chat to random jurors in advance, but I get the sense from the jurors who've been at court a few days already that once you've been through one trial, the first-name basis will act as an opening for conversation over the next few weeks. How much fun that will be is something else entirely!


¹ Snaresbrook, which we were told is the largest single court complex in Europe, and also the old Royal Wanstead Orphanage, then School