It's quite interesting to ask how other countries manage to have a decent judicial system.

Mind, what would help is (somehow) improving the general standard of public discourse in this country. Although that would mean the majority of the media stopping deliberately dumbing down to grab the largest share of the market possible.

In the specific case of accepting your husbands speeding points, and with the proviso that I haven't a clue how far the range of evidence went, its a fair question to ask how far the "reasonable doubt" issue should be stretched when you are dealing with a specific offence that depends upon the defendant admitting guilt rather than the state proving it - if you've ever seen some of the "evidence" gathered by speed cameras then you'd realise what I mean.

Having said that this case is a beautiful paradox, she accuses him of doing something which he denies and in doing so drops herself in it too, then he admits doing the thing that she accused him of but they can't find a jury to convict her of dropping herself in it - all we need now is for him to get off the hook and we can tie it all up in a nice big parcel with a big pink bow and file under "too confusing for a jury"

Huhne is German for chicken. Chris - is it really you??

I think these sort of juries are probably common but in this case it was newsworthy. I did a bit of jury service at the ' Bailey a few years ago and on one of the cases I was involved in some of the jurors were a joke. Rather like this case we had to go back two or three times to have simple questions answered because of a couple of stupid / over-anxious jurors. The judge had carefully explained the points in question and me an AN Other-Juror tried to explain things and what the judge had said but no we had to reconvene. Bearing in mind they stick another case in the Court while the jury deliberates it was really embarassing having to reconvene with all the participants being reassembled on such minor points. Judge started to get sarcastic. Some of the points made by jurors during deliberation were beyond belief - one anxious woman in particular argued that as the judge had been careful to say that to convict our minds had to be made up beyond reasonable doubt then as she hadn't been there to witness the alleged crime she nust have doubt! Another woman then agreed and things spiralled downhill. They could not seem to see that if they'd been there they would have been witnesses and not jurors and that therefore no one could ever be convicted! Then they were worried if they found the defendant guilty because it was a serious offence he might get locked up for a while! I pointed out that the judge was responsible for sentencing and he was somewhat more experienced than us.

When he was eventually found 'innocent' the judge was very sarcastic saying something like he was glad we had been so careful in reaching such a well thought out verdict. Defendant was "over the moon" and practically in shock and was thanking us. Alleged victim's family were rather abusive.

How droll Ms Mintballs. Wilful stupidity indeed!

Perhaps you should take a moment or several to try and understand that it is not the pigmentation of one's skin , rather the social/ cultural characteristics as well as ancestry, which contribute to ones ethnicity.

That aside, the composition of this Jury was 8 women and 4 men, and at least some of them appeared to have only the faintest grasp of what the Judge was saying. Which raises the very valid questions posed earlier.....is the present British Jury system adequate for the 21st Century, or could it be improved, or was this simply an unfortunate case of 12 extremely thick people?.

And could one qualifying improvement not be, that a basic understanding of the English language be a pre requisite before serving on a Jury?

Oh, I am very well away of that. But it's a bit complex really for a short retort to someone trying to bring the issue of race/ethnicity into the equation.

Translation: "At least 10 of the other 11 jurors disagreed with me, so they're all nuts, because I am always right."

Some (certainly on this jury) are too stupid to serve.

I was once told by a women I did some work for, who was a magistrate that 'in her experience' the police never lie

Wonder how many innocent people she sent down

Entirely coincidentally, but the other day tb and I were discussing the whole issue of jury trials and saying that it's easy to forget that many countries that we regard as entirely civilised and fair etc don't have jury trials. Indeed, at appeals and in the upper courts, we don't either.

The jury system came out of [iMagna Carta[/i, although at that stage it was only intended that barons judge other barons – nothing to do with us peasants.

But it doesn't mean that you have to have a jury system to have a fair and scrupulous judicial system. I doubt we'd suggest that, say, the likes of Denmark, Sweden and Germany had inherently unfair judicial systems, and none of these have jury trials in any situations. Some countries have jury trials in some situations but not all.

Perhaps we don't need to be as wedded to the jury system as we are (for fairly understandable reasons of tradition).

Maybe we should just up turn a drum.

When I did my jury service one of the clerks of the court mentioned after the event we had made the right decision. It was the car theft case which took a long time due to one juror struggling (coincidentally) enough with the concept of reasonable doubt. It was as if she wanted CCTV footage of him driving the car away and simply could not accept that although we had no such evidence the evidence we did have meant it was unreasonable to conclude he didn't steal the car. However I am sure she felt she was in the right to stand her corner and surely that is part of the process. It would be no good if juries retired and came back five minutes later with a verdict.

The thing is though without being party to the discussions the Pryce jury had or party to the evidence they were presented with, it is not possible to slag them off for not even managing to reach a majority verdict or IMO even for the questions asked.

The point I made earlier, given the sheer number of trials and ONE case of this happening (the trial judge said it was unique in his 30 years experience), it does seem OTT, to say the least, to extrapolate questions as to the adequacy of the entire jury system.



It would not be an improvement, as it already exists. But don't let the facts get in your way.