Jaycee How Sook Wei

July ’18 G18 The Jury

The first jurors acted as witnesses, providing information about local matters, and
were largely used for administrative businesses, like gathering information for the Domesday
Book. Under Henry II, the jury began to take on an important judicial function, moving from
reporting on events they knew about, to deliberating on evidence produced by the parties
involved in a dispute.

According to Bushell’s Case, jurors can give verdicts according to their conscience.
The importance of that right is that juries may acquit a defendant even when the law demands
a guilty verdict. The House of Lords confirmed that a judge can never tell a jury to convict, as
enforced in R v Wang 2005. Today, the jury is considered a fundamental part of the English
legal system, though only a minority of cases is tried by jury. The main Act that governs jury
trial is the Juries Act 1974.

The jury has to weigh up the evidence and decide what are the true facts of a case.
The judge directs the jury to what is the relevant law, then the jury applies the law to the facts
and thereby reach a verdict. If it is a criminal case and the jury has given a verdict of guilty,
the judge will then decide on the appropriate sentence. In civil cases, the jury decides on how
much money should be awarded in damages.

In R v Marshall and Crump (2007), two defendants had been convicted of offences
including robbery and manslaughter. After their conviction, material printed off the Internet
was found in the jury room. Professor Thomas’s research published in 2010 found that in 12
percent of high profile cases, jurors looked for information on the Internet. In R v F (2009),
two members of the jury were seen talking to a law student who had been watching the trial.
The conviction was quashed on appeal because of the appearance of the risk that the jury
could have been influenced by evidence not heard in court.

Criminal offences are classified into three groups: summary offences, indictable
offences and triable either way offences. Summary offences are the least serious cases, about
95%, are heard in the magistrates’ court, where juries have no role. Juries only decide cases
heard in the Crown Court. This include indictable offences and triable either way offences
tried on indictment.

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 provides for trial by judge alone in the Crown Court in
two situations: where a serious risk of jury tampering (s.44), or where the case involves
complex or lengthy financial and commercial arrangements (s.43).

The senior Courts Act 1981 gives a qualified right to jury trial of civil cases in three
types, which are: malicious prosecution, false imprisonment and fraud. The Criminal Justice
Act 2003, s.321 and s.33 amended the Juries Act 1974. This Act now provides that potential
jury members must be aged 18 to 75, is registered on the electoral register, is a resident in the
UK, at least five years since the age of 13, not a mentally disordered person and not
disqualified from the jury service. People can be disqualified or excused from jury service
due to age, residency, mental disability, criminal record, language and medical reasons.
 Before 2003, the police, prosecutors, barristers, solicitors and prison officers were
ineligible to sit as jurors, so this problem was avoided. With regards to the police, the court’s
approach is that the greatest risk of bias exists where the police evidence is disputed by the
defence and where the police officer on the jury is acquainted with a police officer appearing
for the prosecution. Otherwise, there could be a breach of the right to a fair trial guaranteed
under Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1988. People will not be allowed to sit as a juror if
their ordinary employment would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that
there was a real possibility that they would be biased.

The Central Juror Summoning Bureau was established to administer the juror
summoning process for the whole of the country. Court order summons are sent out,
alongside a return form confirming that the person does not fall into any of the disqualified or
ineligible groups. From the resulting list, the jury panel is produced. Jury service is
compulsory and failure to attend on the specific date is contempt of court and can result in a
fine, unless there is unfitness for service through consumption of alcohol or drugs. In criminal
cases, 12 jurors are usually summoned, but never fewer than nine. For civil cases in the
county courts, there are eight jurors.

Once a panel of jurors has been assembled, the parties may wish to challenge certain
jurors and have them removed from the trial prior to them bring sworn in. Both prosecution
and defence may challenge for cause on 3 grounds: that the juror is not qualified; is
reasonably believed to be biased against the defendant; or biased for some other reasons. The
next challenge is the prosecution’s right to require a juror to stand, where a juror will be put
to the end of the list of potential jurors, so that they will not be used on the jury unless there
are not enough other jurors. The prosecution need not give reasons for ‘standing by’ a juror
but the Attorney General’s Practice Direction of 1988 provides that this power must be used
sparingly and may only be exercised where it is to prevent the empanelment of a manifestly
unsuitable juror; or the potential juror has been vetted and revealed to be a security risk.

Once they retire to consider their verdict, jurors are not allowed to communicate with
anyone other than the judge and assigned court official, until after the verdict is delivered.
They are forbidden by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 from revealing anything that
was said or done during their deliberations. Breach of this section amounts to a criminal
offence. In Attorney General v Seckerson and Times Newspapers Ltd (2009), a jury foreman
revealed to the Times newspaper that he had concerns with how the guilty verdict was
reached in a high-profile criminal case. Both the juror and newspaper were fined for
committing a criminal offence. Ideally, juries should produce a unanimous verdict, where
majority verdicts were introduced of ten to two, as provided in the Juries Act 1974.

Juries are deemed important because they inject an element of public participation in
the administration of justice. This boosts public confidence as a jury trial delivers transparent
justice since the public play an important role in the criminal justice process. Lord Denning
described jury service as giving “ordinary folk their finest lesson in citizenship”. In a criminal
case, the jury provides certainty by simply stating that the accused is guilty or not guilty and
gives no reason. Next is the ability to judge according to conscience, as any attempt to put
pressure on the jury has been fiercely crushed. Furthermore, the New Zealand Law
Commission found in 2001 that no evidence of the jury not being impartial and undemocratic
but instead, they were committed to their task, play an educative role and introduce the
elements of civic participation.
 However, juries’ trials are slow as juries spend much of their time waiting around to
be summoned into court. Crown Court trials take longer than those in the Magistrates’ Court
and costs more. Furthermore, juries are inefficient as they have no training in law and may be
unable to comprehend the issues in a case. The Roskill Committee concluded that trial by
random jury was not a satisfactory way of achieving justice in such cases, with many jurors
who are out of their depth. Next, Ingman suggests that jurors may be biased towards certain
groups, like favouring attractive members of the opposite sex.

In addition, there is a lack of representation of ethnic minorities. For example, black

Next, juries only return with an unexplained verdict, which may not be rational. When
the appellate court is faced with a jury’s verdict, it cannot dispute the jury’s reasonable
interpretation of the evidence. Instead, the appeals have to focus on the judge’s directions to
the jury on the law and argue that the judge made an error on the relevant law. In Taxquet v
Belgium the European Court of Human Rights held that there is no convention requirement
that lay jurors should give reasons for their decisions, but the accused and the public must be
able to understand the jury’s verdict if the trial is to be regarded as fair.

It is highly unlikely that the jury system will be replaced, though it is clearly an area
under scrutiny and subject to ongoing reform. The Government’s 1998 consultation paper on
the criminal justice system considered four possible options for serious fraud trials. This
includes abolishing the use of juries in fraud trials completely and replacing them with a
specially trained single judge and two lay people with expertise in commercial affairs. Juries
can also be replaced with a specially trained single judge or panel of judges. It is also
suggested that juries can be retained, but their role in deciding questions of dishonesty will be
restricted, with the judge deciding other matters. The last option is replacing the traditional,
randomly selected jury with a special jury selected on the basis of qualification or tests.

In conclusion, there are many problems caused by the jury system which calls for the
abolition of the system. However, one should keep in mind that many steps are being taken to
reform the system for the better.