Jury service - Day 5

I'm pretty sure not one of us could have predicted that we'd go into deliberation today and still be at it 7 hours later. After just over 5 hours of discussion (including the hour at the tail end of yesterday's session), we received direction from the judge that a majority verdict of 10-2 would now be acceptable, although we should still try for a unanimous verdict. We couldn't even get to an acceptable majority by the end of the day, though, and are going to have to continue trying on Monday. There is some possibility of getting there, though, so we haven't had to declare a hung jury. Yet. Monday will be the decider, I'm sure.

A rather interesting fact came to light during the morning. We'd had our jury usher changed, and during a break were idly speculating on reasons for the change when one of the jurors piped up to tell us she'd asked for the previous usher to be removed. Out of sheer curiosity, since it wasn't particularly relevant to our deliberations, I asked why, but she refused to explain, as is her right, of course. It wouldn't have been an issue if the new usher were a tenth as efficient as yesterday's, but he's abysmal, and the rest of us can't help feeling a little resentful that we're having to endure his inattention without knowing why. But there you go; jurors can affect a change in the assigned usher. More power to us!

Another glaring flaw in the way the jury is managed lies in the lunch procedure. Because we can't be allowed out into the jury lounge - we would be 'contaminated' in the court parlance - we have to have food brought in. The list of options is insanely meager, though. Four kinds of sandwich, and a selection of crisps and sodas, when the jury canteen serves a cornucopia of hot dishes. What's more, only one out of the 10 of us who elected to order actually got what they'd ordered, the rest having to settle for the sandwiches no sane person willingly eats; egg and cress. Feh. It's seems a little foolish to me to tell a jury that they can take as much time as they need to deliberate and came to a fair verdict when your dis-insentivising them by curtailing their environment so harshly and penalising them for taking longer than a morning to deliberate by withholding a satisfying lunch. If their tactic is to treat us mean and keep us keen, then it's horribly ineffective, because a majority of the jurors have pledged to be more rapid with their verdicts in future to avoid the 'punishment'. I believe it would be more effective to treat the jurors as the indispensable element of the justice system that they're told they are.

Just feed us properly, damn it! Even animals in the zoo get that much!