Jury service - Day 4

And a long day it's been, too. It's been the first day in which we've arrived at the normal start of a court day and left at the very end; in fact, we went over time a little before being dismissed.

It's crunch time. The case has now been heard, the evidence is in, and we've been sent out to deliberate. Our official title right now is the 'overnight jury' (as opposed to the 'sitting jury' while we were hearing the case). There was some concern when the time reached 4.30pm that we would be held until a verdict was reached, but fortunately this is not the case, so I can lie awake anxiously in my own bed tonight. Yay.

The nature of the case is such that there is no guarantee we will reach a verdict tomorrow, but I'm thinking that it's unlikely that we'll be granted a truly unlimited time to decide, in spite of the court's assurances to the contrary, so we will most probably finish with this trial tomorrow in one form or another.

Irrespective of that, I've been stung by a real flaw in the way that the jury's participation in the trial process is handled. It seems that the court officials are so inured to the process that they've forgotten that most jurors will never have been in court before and are, therefore, a little overawed by the environment and less likely to use their right of questioning. Also, as the trial unfolds, although you may have questions as a juror that you want to see answered, you have to assume that the barristers for both parties will address all aspects of the facts of the case in due course, so you hold off on your questions until it can be reasonably assumed that they're not going to be answered as a result of the barristers' examinations. Well, that's what I thought anyway, and so was alarmed and annoyed to be told, once all evidence had been heard, and before the councils were to address us with their closing arguments, that the list of unanswered questions I had was too late to receive answers. The trial was over, and the fact that we'd not yet had closing arguments was irrelevant. This, in spite of the fact that my questions were acknowledged by the judge herself to be pertinent and overlooked; she could do nothing about obtaining answers.

It seems obvious to me that a simple request to the jury to submit in writing any unanswered questions that they had accrued during the evidence of each witness to the judge before each witness is released would go a long way to ensuring that the jury has all the available facts before they begin deliberation. That's exactly what I intend to ask the Criminal Justice System. Their response won't do anything to assist in this case, though, and I feel a little betrayed that I'm now not in an ideal situation to assess guilt in this case as a result of the oversight and will have to live with what may be a less than certain verdict. What's more, the verdict is going to have an enormous impact on the people involved in the case, and they're not getting the best shot at the truth as a result of the oversight. And that's killing me.

This is why I didn't want a case of this nature. I hate being right all the damn time.