Second Chances

SocketRocket said:
So whats the alternative to the Jury system?
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Errr....... Its the best we have, my only problem with it is that too many people are excluded from particular cases because of a perceived bias one way or another.
The whole idea was originally to get a cross section of society rather than a hand picked few who conform to the defendants ideals
 
PhilTheFragger said:
Errr....... Its the best we have, my only problem with it is that too many people are excluded from particular cases because of a perceived bias one way or another.
The whole idea was originally to get a cross section of society rather than a hand picked few who conform to the defendants ideals
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Certainly seem so for most cases - the alternative being Professionals such as 1 or several Judges. It has been argued that some complex cases, such as many of those that involve the Serious Fraud Office, could well overwhelm juries, so should be judged by Judiciary only. The contra to that is that the Judiciary, while trained in Law, are quite possibly even more likely to be out of touch/ignorant of such complexities and, by their nature, are very often quite remote from the rest of society, the occasional daft statement/decision that has come from Magistrates demonstrating that!

Juries are apparently normally 'driven' by about 4 or 5 of their members, an advantage of having 12 being the likelihood of getting that number of 'attentive' members!
 
MegaSteve said:
Can't speak for BiM but I'm old enough and ugly enough to take on board there's no such thing as a perfect 'system'... And, I guess, our way has, in balance, served us well for quite a while...
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Spoke pretty well for me on the first part, definitely old enough & ugly enough (as my mate Fragger has confirmed :ears: )to realise that little is perfect in our world. But having seen the decisions I have come back from juries, and indeed some of the comments, I am firmly in the camp that there needs to be some sort of selection system other than dragging names off the electoral roll, or maybe a case for 3 judges rather than a jury in some cases.
 
PhilTheFragger said:
Errr....... Its the best we have, my only problem with it is that too many people are excluded from particular cases because of a perceived bias one way or another.
The whole idea was originally to get a cross section of society rather than a hand picked few who conform to the defendants ideals
Click to expand...

it has to be like to get a fair trial for the accused. If you had to sit on a jury of a rapist and your daughter previously had been raped but her accused had got away with it, could you honestly give him a fair trial or would he be guilty until proven innocent.

your a straight up decent bloke Phil, but your only human like the rest of us. I don't think in that situation I could give the accused a fair trial.
 
PhilTheFragger said:
Errr....... Its the best we have, my only problem with it is that too many people are excluded from particular cases because of a perceived bias one way or another.
The whole idea was originally to get a cross section of society rather than a hand picked few who conform to the defendants ideals
Click to expand...

When I did jury service I think there were something like 16 available jurors and each one was sworn in, at at this conjuncture the Defence could object to an individual without giving reason but only to a max of 4. I am not aware that your previous history is taken into account when picked for service, you do have to mention whether you have anything that you feel should exclude you from service like knowing the accused.

Potential Jurors attend the court for the week and are randomly selected into groups. These groups are allocated to trials as and when needed, many do not get to sit on Juries and are released from service early, some can sit on multiple Juries, some can sit around all week and not be used.

It can be a tough job, especially when at the end of the trial you are all put in a room and left to get on with it. There is no handbook or training course and as you can probably imagine, it's not easy to get 12 people to reach agreement.
 
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Many years ago I was a witness in a tobacco and cigarette smuggling case at Crown Court. The guys were banged to rights, they were caught in the act of unloading a 40ft lorry of the contraband into a unit they had rented with a forklift they had purchased.

In court the only defence, and is well known, is that they were asked to do a legal unload for someone and didn't know what the load was. They said that they met someone in a pub, didn't know his name or address and agreed to help him out by unloading his shipment as the lorry driver had to get back to Italy quickly. This is a common defence but juries pretty much always return a guilty verdict - but not in this case and it was thought that as the jury was predominantly made up of young people, they don't see smuggling as a major crime and didn't want to convict them !!

I knew they were as guilty as hell and the case was prosecuted well enough for that to be proven beyond doubt!
 
SocketRocket said:
When I did jury service I think there were something like 16 available jurors and each one was sworn in, at at this conjuncture the Defence could object to an individual without giving reason but only to a max of 4. I am not aware that your previous history is taken into account when picked for service, you do have to mention whether you have anything that you feel should exclude you from service like knowing the accused.
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Its at this point though that you need to speak up if like I said in my post that, you have close personal feelings towards the crime the defendant has committed, from what I understand if you found him guilty there is a risk that the defence could move for a miss trial. Like in the example I gave earlier, if you sat on the jury for the trial of a rapist after someone close to you was raped but the accused got away with it, they could say that you are not able to give the accused a fair trial.
 
SocketRocket said:
When I did jury service I think there were something like 16 available jurors and each one was sworn in, at at this conjuncture the Defence could object to an individual without giving reason but only to a max of 4...
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No Preremptory Challenges available to the Defence these days - since 1988.
 
CheltenhamHacker said:
Doesn't this contrast with your oft repeated support for numerous islands ruled with an iron fist?
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If you do your research and know what it is you are talking about then you understand , my support for the iron fist only refers to people who break the law like drug dealers , robbers and the rest , Guys like me who just go about our business have nothing to fear or worry about as it does not apply to us
 
JCW said:
If you do your research and know what it is you are talking about then you understand , my support for the iron fist only refers to people who break the law like drug dealers , robbers and the rest , Guys like me who just go about our business have nothing to fear or worry about as it does not apply to us
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So no second chances for drug dealers and robbers?
 
JCW said:
If you do your research and know what it is you are talking about then you understand , my support for the iron fist only refers to people who break the law like drug dealers , robbers and the rest , Guys like me who just go about our business have nothing to fear or worry about as it does not apply to us
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ha ha ha. I love your style JCW. I'm pretty sure you could have an argument with yourself.
 
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