I support the jury system as I support democracy: it is the worst system of justice around, except for all the others. My own experience of serving on a jury was inspiring in some ways, frustrating in others. The current Labour government wants to abolish them for all but the most serious cases. Assuming Sir Keir Starmer and Mr David Lammy MP are sincere in their claim that all they want to do is speed up justice, are there any better ways to do that than denying the accused their ancient right to a jury of their peers?
David Friedman was recently summoned to present himself for jury service in the US. He seems to have been sent home without ever reaching the jury-box. I have the impression that the the American courts turn away a higher percentage of those called to jury service than the UK courts do, and also that they make much more of a fuss about excluding jurors who might be biased, which over there often seems to mean in effect excluding jurors who might be intelligent. Despite this and many other differences between the two systems, not all of which favour the UK, I think that Professor Friedman’s observations on the careless way in which jurors’ time was wasted might be relevant to us here. The underlying reason Friedman and his fellow jurors (or whatever the word is for people who are called to be jurors but are not chosen) got to know every crack in the courthouse wall was that the people who have power to speed up or slow down cases pay next to nothing for the jurors’ time. Friedman writes:
What most struck me, as an economist, about the process was the implication of its having access to nearly free labor — there was no payment for the first day, fifteen dollars a day thereafter. The courthouse was towards the south end of the county, about half an hour’s drive from me, forty-five minutes from the north end. We were told that the jurors were selected at random, with no attempt to select jurors for cases in the south courthouse from the south end of the county — because doing that would have biased the selection, how was not explained.
Out of more than eighty of us called in only about twenty-one were put through the voir dire process. The rest were presumably there in case more were eliminated, but it is hard to see how that could justify calling in that many. A jury system that took the value of our time seriously could have called in half as many, perhaps fewer, and, if that occasionally turned out not to be sufficient, additional candidates the next day. By the end of the first day they knew that they had most of the jurors they needed, could have saved most of the rest of us the time and the trip.
Further evidence is how our time in the courthouse was used. We arrived the first day by nine, were sent home at four, a total of seven hours on site. Of those seven hours we spent most of an hour waiting to be told what room we were to go to, an hour and a half for lunch, two hour long breaks. We were actually involved in the jury selection process for less than three hours out of seven.
That again looks like a result of treating our time as a free good, but I do not know enough about what else was happening to be certain. Running a trial, even the preliminaries to a trial, involves coordinating the activity of multiple people: juror candidates, the judge, the attorneys, perhaps others. My guess is that if the county had to pay a market rate for our time they would have found a schedule that used it more efficiently but I could be wrong.
I have so far interpreted what I observed as evidence that the people responsible did not care how much of our time was spent in the process, since our attendance was compulsory and the price paid for it low, on the first day zero, but there is another possible interpretation of the evidence.
Free Audience
Much of the time we were in the courthouse we were being preached to, largely about the virtues of the jury system, first in videos while we were waiting to be assigned to a jury room, later by the judge, who described the jury system as the essential support of a free society. He did not mention that, in the current US legal system, less than a tenth of felony defendants get a jury trial, with the rest of the convictions due to guilty pleas, mostly from plea bargains. A defendant who rejects the offered plea bargain and goes to trial risks a much higher penalty.The judge and the videos repeatedly told us that, if we ended up on the jury, we were to decide the case on the basis only of information presented at trial, ignoring anything else, especially warning us against going online to get relevant information. That sounds reasonable but is in fact impossible. Each juror’s interpretation of witness testimony depends on his view of how truthful people are, how to tell when they are lying, how likely the events they describe are to have happened, an enormous body of information based on previous experience. There is no way to reach a verdict on the basis of nothing but trial evidence. As a Bayesian would put it, no posterior without a prior.
The judge and the videos repeatedly praised us for our contribution to the process, never mentioning that it was mandatory, that we did not have the option of refusing to come.
We were being told things the judge, the trial apparatus more generally, wanted us to believe, told them by authoritative sources at little risk of being contradicted. Not only was time we spent in the courthouse not a cost to those running the process it may have been, from their point of view, a benefit.
Friedman is undoubtedly right to say that “Running a trial, even the preliminaries to a trial, involves coordinating the activity of multiple people: juror candidates, the judge, the attorneys, perhaps others.” He goes on to speculate that “if the county had to pay a market rate for our time they would have found a schedule that used it more efficiently but I could be wrong.” I remember once travelling several hours by train to a company’s headquarters to discuss a commercial project. Sweet young thing that I was, I pointed out that if they held the meeting a quarter of an hour later I could buy some sort of saver ticket and save them more than a hundred pounds. They declined to do so. The nice man who spoke to me was at pains to say that this was not because he did not care about saving his employers money, it was because when you added up the cost of the time of all the attendees, the fuss and time involved in changing their schedules would probably cost more than my £100-plus. I believed him on that, even if I didn’t entirely believe that he was as careful with the company’s money as he would be with his own.
In the US jurors are paid very little. In the UK jurors are technically not paid at all, but can claim allowances to cover lost earnings – which works out OK for those with predictable salaries but badly for those with uncertain day-to-day income, especially if their business depends on them being available. If we paid jurors more but changed nothing else, juries would be even more of a burden on the taxpayer than they are currently. But is it crazy to think that if, somehow, those running the process were made to bear more of the costs of calling jurors then they would have an incentive to streamline things? We may not wish to make as much use of plea bargaining in the UK as the US does, but I know from long airless hours in the waiting room of a Crown Court building with a broken air conditioning system that those who operate the British justice system, which mostly means judges and defence and prosecution lawyers, like their American equivalents, do not directly pay for the time of jurors and therefore waste it in the manner that human beings commonly do waste that which someone else pays for. The “someone else” in this case being the insensate generic taxpayer. We in the UK do not even have the minimal incentive to save money that comes from “the county” footing the bill; here it is all paid for centrally by the Ministry of Justice. Rather than rip up the ancient jury system to save a few quid, could we not achieve the same object by, say, making more use of video calls? (Do we make more use of video calls since the pandemic, and I missed the memo?) Or if not the video calls, something else. This random blogger may not be able to think of ways to improve the system, but I bet people who work with it every day would be able to, given the incentive. History abounds with people who ceased to get a resource for free and suddenly discovered ingenious ways to use that resource more intelligently. The difference between this and what Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy want is the difference between wielding an axe and a scalpel.
If we paid jurors more we could trade the extra money for indulging them less in other ways. When did it stop being the case that jurors were denied light, fire and sustenance until a verdict was reached? CoPilot says 1670. ChatGPT says 1825. Roll on the Butlerian Jihad: I know for a fact that it was still true in 1930 when Harriet Vane stood trial for the murder of Philip Boyes. In that case, which took place before majority verdicts were allowed, the artist and that redoubtable spinster Miss Climpson held out for Not Guilty and forced a retrial. The artist alarmed the rest of jury by saying that he was accustomed to late nights and a stale atmosphere and had not the slightest objection to sitting up all night and Miss Climpson also said that in a righteous cause, a little personal discomfort was a trifle, and added that her religion had trained her to fasting.
Perhaps it would be going too far to bring back that rule in its full vigour. Those were the days when, as Alexander Pope put it in his satirical poem The Rape of the Lock, “Wretches hang that jurymen may dine”. The stiff-necked jury of which Edward Bushel was the foreman deserve their plaque in the Old Bailey and their place in British legal history. But maybe it would speed matters up if we, while paying jurors decently for their time and allowing them a reasonable level of comfort, stopped letting them go home at night. Making jury sequestration mandatory is another thing that I think might save more money than it costs in the long run. It would curb the abuse of the requirement for disclosure when, for instance, the defence electronically dumps a vast number of documents on the prosecution most of which are irrelevant but which the prosecution must read anyway, and feels obliged to pass on in only slightly reduced form to the jury. Come to think of it, it would reduce the use of disclosure, which was a reasonable safeguard against injustice being done when reproducing a document involved typewriters and carbon paper but has become an impediment to justice when a million words can be sent at the touch of a button. I see no reason to believe that fraud trials “being more complex nowadays” and hence taking months or years is an unalterable fact of nature. Were fraud trials inherently less complex – or less fair – a hundred years ago?
Readers learned in the law can probably think of many things wrong with the somewhat random set of proposals I came up with in this post. The wider point I want to make is that if Messrs Starmer and Lammy really seek only to speed up the legal system there are better ways than amputating one of the legs upon which it stands. Some of those ways could involve simply going back to doing things we know work because they did work.
The aforementioned case of R v Vane is also relevant to David Friedman’s point that “Each juror’s interpretation of witness testimony depends on his view of how truthful people are, how to tell when they are lying, how likely the events they describe are to have happened, an enormous body of information based on previous experience. There is no way to reach a verdict on the basis of nothing but trial evidence.” Indeed so. As Lord Peter said of Miss Climpson:
They bullied her a good deal, of course, because she couldn’t lay a finger on any real weakness in the chain of evidence, but she said the prisoner’s demeanour was part of the evidence and that she was entitled to take that into consideration. Fortunately, she is a tough, thin, elderly woman with a sound digestion and a militant High-Church conscience of remarkable staying-power, and her wind is excellent. She let ’em all gallop themselves dead, and then said she still didn’t believe it and wasn’t going to say she did.”
Huh? The jury in the first trial of R. v Vane was not denied ‘food and firing’ until they reached a verdict – upon reporting that they could not agree,they were courteously encoraged by the learned judge (twice, IIRC) to go back and try a little more, and were then dismissed and a retrial announced.
I would have to go back and revisit my 50-year-old studies but IIRC, the last time that a jury was held against its will in pursuit of a unanimouus verdict was some time late in the C18.
llater,
llamas
Llamas, having found and re-read my copy of the account of the trial provided by Miss Sayers, I am confident that you are mistaken. When the jury first retires, everybody thinks they won’t take long. After two and a quarter hours, somebody in the gallery called ‘Waffles’ Newton asks, “What happens if they are up all night about it?” After three hours, the judge sends a message asking if he can help in any way. After three and a half hours a chap in the gallery offers to go and buy some sandwiches for himself and his wife, saying “Be glad you’re not the jury – they’re not allowed anything at all.” She replies, “What, nothing to eat or drink?” and he says, “Not a thing. I don’t think they’re supposed to have light or fire either”. Then the jury come out and tell the judge they cannot agree and he tells them to try some more. After six and a half hours have gone by the jury come out looking variously bedraggled, hysterical and furious and the foreman says, “We shall never agree, my lord – not if we was to stay here till Doomsday.” Then the judge lets them go, orders a retrial and excuses them from jury service for the next twelve years.
The whole point of the bit about the artist being willing to stay up all night and Miss Climpson saying she is accustomed to fasting was that they might indeed have to do those things.
I watched a video a few days ago where the speaker, Dr Harry Binswanger, said that paid jury service should be encouraged by paying people a sum to make it worth their while to even specialise in it for part of the year. States’ core functions – if you are in the classical liberal camp – includes functioning courts. So at least we should pay sufficient to get jurors to serve. Jury service would not need to be compulsory. One could rotate jurors so they can only sit in certain cases. They could even be chosen for certain expertise in cases such as fraud.
The focus in any event should be on speeding up the current system in the UK. If there really is a bad backlog of cases, a temporary suspension of juries – for those that are currently on th books – could be justified, such as for six months, with extra rights of appeal where cases look to be particularly contentious. A permanent suspension is, in my view, part of a wider rollback on the “architecture” of our checks and balances in the UK.
Dan Hannan has good observations here.
Johnathan Pearce writes, “If there really is a bad backlog of cases, a temporary suspension of juries – for those that are currently on th books – could be justified, such as for six months, with extra rights of appeal where cases look to be particularly contentious.” Never forget that when income tax was introduced in 1799 it was billed as a temporary measure to help pay for the war with Napoleon.
@ Natalie Solent – well, I did pulle the story up on my Kindle before replying,although I admit I only scanned it for the high points. But now having re-read it thoroughly, I’m going to suggest, with the greatest possible respect, that you may be misreading the story.
The husband in the gallery with the sandwiches is merely repeating the urban legend about juries being confined ‘without food, light or firing’ until they produced a verdict. That practice had ended with Bushell’s Case in (what?) 1670, when the LCJ ruled that judges could not compel juries to a verdict. The artist and Miss Climpson are only stating their willingness to endure a lot more deliberation. And, indeed, when it comes to it, after having prevailed upon the jury to perhaps consider a little longer in the hopes of finding agreement, the learned judge simply sends them on their way. Then, as now, if the jury had told him the first time that they were hopelessly deadlocked, and no amount of further deliberations could possibly bring them to a verdict, the judge would have had no choice but to discharge them then. While the judge can direct the jury to return a certain verdict as a matter of law, once the case is turned over to the jury for a decision as to guilt or innocence, the judge has no further say and must accept what the jury decides.
Except, apparently, in Minnesota.
llater,
llamas
OK, from the west side of the Atlantic, something on how jury duty is viewed or at least used to be.
1) It is a literal civic duty and is the counterpart of your right to be tried “by a jury of your peers”.
2) The reason that such a trial is considered vital is that government power, as represented by law enforcement [Executive Branch] and the courts [Judicial Branch] may well have their own motivations and corruption outside the law. “Your peers” is a check and balance on that. Which is why Americans look askance at the brit abandoning of it.
3) While it can be personally inconvenient [duty frequently is] for most employers a jury summons is grounds for paid or unpaid leave with no penalty.
4) They call so many for each jury pool because voir dire tosses so many possible jurors. And rightly so. If you are related to the defendant, even distantly, out you go. If you know either the defendant, his close family, his friends, his employer, and/or the same for the victim, out you go as being possibly biased. If you are involved with the criminal justice system, you are out. Note, that I had 28 years wearing a badge, was called several times, and was released by the judge at voir dire immediately; but I had to go in to court because I was not privileged by being a Peace Officer.
The current regime in britain apparently does not believe there should be limits on the Coercive Organs of State Power.
Subotai Bahadur
I was called for jury service a couple of years ago, but never heard a case. In the two weeks I was there, only one jury was formed, out of the 80 or so people called. I think this was because most of the accused were pleading guilty, so juries were certainly not causing any delays.
I think I got about £500 in expenses, but I was disappointed not to have had a trial, I would have found it interesting.
Give governments power to do something “in an emergency” and you will have a perpetual “emergency” – for example the “temporary and emergency” suspension of gold payments to (and confiscation of monetary gold from) Americans in 1933 and to foreign governments in 1971 (the two stage end of any link between the monetary and financial system and reality.
Governments that “suspend” jury trial – will tend to end up getting rid of it.
However, Income Tax was ended after the Napoleonic Wars – as I (and others) have pointed out many times, it did not return till the 1840s- Sir Robert Peel saying that Income Tax was needed to fund the end of tariffs. Gladstone got Income Tax down to less than 1% in 1874 – and would have abolished it, but Disraeli won the election – and Disraeli was a statist (if he had any belief system at all).
The American Income Tax came in during the Civil War – but was abolished after it, it returned in 1913 – with the claim that this would lead to lower tariffs, tariffs soon became HIGHER than they had ever been in American history – it was not just the tariff that was incredibly high after 1931, the top rate of Income Tax was increased to over 60% in 1932.
And business leaders were told not to reduce Real Wages – not even for a short period of time (as had happened, for a short period of time, after every Credit Money bust since 1819 – over a century – so the labour market could clear) – this led to the labour market not clearing, and MASS UNEMPLOYMENT in the 1930s.
Anyone who thinks that policy in America before President Franklin Roosevelt was in any way “conservative” or “laissez faire” is utterly wrong.
A few random thoughts on this:
* It is important to remember why we have jury trials; why not just let the professionals do it? Because it is a final check on the power of the government and we must all surely agree that is a very good thing indeed. These bloody minded people who refused to convict despite enormous pressure from the court, the prosecution and their fellow jurors are heroes.
* Jury service has parallels in conscription. Of course it is far less severe and burdensome — it takes less time and you are far less likely to get shot. However, I am deeply opposed to conscription, and for the same reasons we need a volunteer military, we also need volunteer juries.
* One way to get volunteer juries is make it a law that your employer has to continue to pay you your full salary while you serve. I’m not sure how entirely fair that is, but it is no different than our standard business taxes. What I do know is that people would be lining up to take advantage of it.
* For those who oppose the removal of some jury trials, do you think jury trials should be mandatory for parking tickets? If not where is the limit. You are just arguing about the price at that point.
* Is there any reason that juries can’t be “work from home”? I don’t think the danger of jury pollution is any higher than if they go home for dinner each night.
* I’ll say this, knowing full well that BobbyB who knows a hell of a lot more about this than me strongly disagrees, but it seems to me that the aggressive plea bargaining system in the US is not much different than the proposed idea of eliminating jury trials. It seems that there are such an overwhelming number of laws, and the penalties so huge that the risk of massive overcharging and massively excessive penalties means that it is often a wise choice to cop a plea even when you are not guilty. Especially when the DA can use dreadfully vague crimes like accessorial charges to manipulate people. If I set you in a room full of deadly, angry snakes and offer to rescue you for $1000 are you really making a free choice when you pay the $1000? One has to remember there are so many laws we are probably all breaking them all the time, and the prosecutors can use that in what seems like very unfair ways.
I was thinking about this latter point with Trump’s DOJ charging lots of high profile politicians with mortgage fraud. By no means am I suggesting that these crimes are victimless, but they are widespread, and the hyper selective prosecution of these individuals really does speak to the power of prosecutors to achieve goals that have nothing to do with justice by using mountains of lawbooks with vague charges and massive, disproportionate penalties.
I don’t have much sympathy for the people involved — they are all terrible human beings that would not hesitate to do the same to Trump or his friends. But it is all pretty nasty and illustrative of the ugly parts of the criminal justice system.
Nonetheless, my views should be taken with a large grain of salt since Jack McCoy, Serena Southerlyn and Anita Van Buren are the primary professors in the law (and order) school I attended.
The cheap bastards don’t pay us to vote, either! It’s like they think they own us!
I’ll just throw this small comment out there so we don’t highjack the thread on pleas:
The ultimate check on this idea that plea bargaining encourages prosecutors to overcharge as a coercive means to get a guilty plea lies in the fact that, should the defendant decide to NOT plead guilty to an offered lower charge, the prosecutor then needs to take that more serious charge to a non-professional jury of people like you and I (who aren’t thrilled being there in the first place) and try to convince THEM that the charge is appropriate for the conduct.
Too many “oh, hell NO”s from juries does bad things to a prosecutor’s career path. No, most prosecutors aren’t going to overcharge to coerce pleas.
(And, if you plan correctly as defense counsel, in the face of sharp bargaining by the state, you make sure the judge is aware that you think a case is overcharged, and you argue that the prosecutor cannot use “lesser included” charges to rescue an overcharged prosecution. The jury must find guilt on the (over)charged offense, or nothing.)
As it says, in the UK they only pay you for loss of earnings. I’m currently unemployed, my earnings are zero, so if called for jury duty my “loss of earnings” would be zero.
I have only been called for jury duty once, over 20 years ago. My job at the time paid me a flat rate per month, regardless of actual amount of time put in or amount of work done. Consequently, taking two weeks “off work” for jury duty also resulted in zero loss of earnings.
@bobby b
The cheap bastards don’t pay us to vote, either! It’s like they think they own us!
You don’t go to jail for not voting.
(Sorry Australia.)
From my experiences with Louisiana jury duty – it’s not that pleasant. I’ve been called for criminal and civil court (twice civil, once criminal), which amounted to being stuck in a jury pool at the court house for a bit over nine hours a day, five days a week for the month without even getting parking validated or a lunch. At the time, I was self-employed IT, so the entire period was a fiscal loss – the court did NOT accept my statement of a financial hardship. First year was civil court, six months later criminal court. A year later had civil court again, as it was “over a year since I had been called for the pool.”
Some pool, that.
The worst part was that during the entire three months, we were only called to a voir dire five times – they could have scheduled out the summons for cases they knew they were running and not had us waste our time.
I moved away from Orleans Parish as I did not want to have a repeat of that fiasco.
In the US, when you enter a courthouse, there is a sign that says “all persons entering are subject to search”, and there metal detectors set up.
Several years ago, I asked a friend of mine who was an assistant district attorney (a prosecutor for those in Europe) what would happen if I showed up for jury duty (as required by law) and announced that I would not submit to a search.
He became very indignant, and accused me of “just trying to make trouble”.
Never answered my question.
jgh – SNAP.
I am also unemployed – and I have also only served on a jury once.
Jury duty is one of the last real remaining ways for us normal everyday people to defend against government overreach and to keep US in power.
Sad to see so many who consider it instead to be a government-led imposition.
England appears to have heard your cries for help. Yay England.
Recently, the system in Scotland was changed so that juries are selected in absentia. You only have to attend if you’re actually going to sit. Now, it’s true that this can only happen because under our system, jurors are selected at random and you take what you get, for better or worse, and of course even if a jury is selected its time might still be wasted by, for example, witnesses failing to attend leading to an adjournment, but it seems to me to be a rare case of “modernization” actually improving matters.
bobby b
Juries can be unjust (finding the innocent guilty, and finding the guilty not-guilty) – if leftists are on the jury, but generally I agree with what you say.
I once ‘served’ on a jury, almost 20 years ago. It was around the time Nicole Kidman was suing a paparazi for some infringement, and I wondered if I might get that case. I was not so lucky. Whilst on the jury, I thought of a system that I thought was superior, which I call Jury-dole. If a citizen applied for the dole, then they might be enlisted into a jury. They would get the dole either way, and non-jurists could look for work during the week. This would favour the elderly (unemployed), but they often claim to be wiser than younger people.
@bobby b
Jury duty is one of the last real remaining ways for us normal everyday people to defend against government overreach and to keep US in power.
Another way to do that is by serving in the military, and I am very glad for the bravery and courage of those people. However, I am still not in favor of conscription either into the military or into jury service.
I refer you to @Rude Guest’s experience where he lost a month’s income after being forced into a system that treated him quite badly and, as it turns out, didn’t even need him. People like you and me, and perhaps Rude, can survive losing a month’s income even if it stings, but there are plenty of people who would be sent into ruin with such an imposition.
If involuntary jury duty is as important as you say it is (and I agree jury service is important, my objection is to the “involuntary” part) then the state should at least compensate people adequately for the loss they suffer as a result. The judge gets paid, the lawyers get paid, the stenographer gets paid, the court officer gets paid, the expert witnesses get paid. It is only the poor schmucks who couldn’t get out of jury service who have this severe imposition placed on them. One way to do this is by distributing the cost by requiring employers to continue paying people while on jury service, something that would mean there would be no shortage of volunteers.
Whenever I hear the word “duty” I immediately assume someone is trying to con me. “Duty” is the word used to guilt someone into doing something that they would not chose to do themselves, or which is harmful to them. I do think there are some things in life that are more important that your own self satisfaction or your own heath and safety, but that is for me to chose according to my values not some pompous legislator or bureaucrat. If something is of higher value than my well being then they should convince me of its importance, not threaten me with fines or jail time if I don’t entirely share their values.
Fraser Orr – “for the same reasons we need a volunteer military, we also need volunteer juries”
Volunteer juries strike me as open to all sorts of abuses; for example Mr Big ordering swarms of his associates to volunteer, and giving them clear orders regarding the verdict. Or “career” jurors who find it easier than doing their actual jobs, and maybe more lucrative too, wink wink.
Whereas if you volunteer for the military you are volunteering to do as you are told by “the Generals and Officers set over me”, which will at least still apply while you are in even if your ultimate aim is to get some training for your own “Revolutionary Army”.
@Barbarus
Volunteer juries strike me as open to all sorts of abuses; for example Mr Big ordering swarms of his associates to volunteer, and giving them clear orders regarding the verdict. Or “career” jurors who find it easier than doing their actual jobs, and maybe more lucrative too, wink wink.
I mean the controls on that are obvious, right? You get to volunteer for jury service and then the court picks when and which case, and you are limited to one time per year or one time per two years, or whatever the number is, and of course you are still subject to voir dire. No doubt the rules would be a bit different for grand juries but something could be put together.
Whereas if you volunteer for the military you are volunteering to do as you are told by “the Generals and Officers set over me”,
But the same is true for juries, right? You are subject to the rules imposed by the judge. For example, you are limited in what news you can watch, who you can associate with, what you can talk about and, in some cases, you could be sequestered for weeks. Failure to follow those rules could have you end up in jail.
BTW, I am not at all saying that being conscripted onto a jury is anywhere near as burdensome as being conscripted into the military to fight a war. Jurors rarely sever more than a month and are usually not shot at or made to do sit-ups in the mud. I am just drawing a parallel with regards to public service and what it means to have a duty imposed on you by the state.
Americans are paid to serve on juries. Not much, a small stipend, but that’s the point. Jurors shouldn’t be paid (a lot) for doing their duty as citizens.
I have been called to jury duty countless times and served on several juries. I consider jury service and honor and privilege and I have no complaints about it.
My wife loves jury duty. She’s served on juries for murderers and pedophiles. She likes to take charge and serve as the jury foreman. She’s a virtual Madame Defarge, knitting and murmuring “guillotine, guillotine, guillotine.” Woe betide the pedophile who comes up against her.
@Budge Hinman
Americans are paid to serve on juries. Not much, a small stipend, but that’s the point. Jurors shouldn’t be paid (a lot) for doing their duty as citizens.
There is that word “duty” again. It is all very well for a relatively well off person to talk about this, but the truth is that that “stipend” is usually not enough to cover your parking fee, never mind lunch. It is ridiculously small, certainly far below the minimum wage. It is in fact an insult. It’d be better if they paid nothing.
I have been called to jury duty countless times and served on several juries. I consider jury service and honor and privilege and I have no complaints about it. My wife loves jury duty. She’s served on juries for murderers and pedophiles. She likes to take charge and serve as the jury foreman. She’s a virtual Madame Defarge, knitting and murmuring “guillotine, guillotine, guillotine.” Woe betide the pedophile who comes up against her.
I think that is great, and it is good to have people like you who want to and are willing to serve, just as i admire the men and women who volunteer for our military. How much better if you could also volunteer for jury service, and how much better if you were not subject to considerable financial loss for doing so. And these values you hold, while admirable, why do you think everyone should share those same values? To take the example of your wife, good on her for her passion, but I imagine that there are a lot of people who would be deeply traumatized by some of the evidence in some of those cases.
Nonetheless, I’d certainly thank you for your service, and I hope all those scarves your wife is knitting keep you warm on this super cold winter!
Would I be happy to go over to Northampton (Kettering does not have courts any more) to serve on a jury?
Yes indeed – and the bus fares are refunded.
But why does Labour want to restrict jury trials? It doesn’t make sense for them to attempt something so hugely unpopular unless it serves some vital political interest of the party.
Right now, that means finding a way to hold on to as many constituencies as possible in its traditional heartlands at the next election. But support for Labour is collapsing among mainstream voters. It’s facing a wipe-out. So, the party’s last chance is to court sectarian “community leaders” who can deliver a bloc vote for Labour if the party gives them something in return.
That’s why it’s committed to introducing an “Islamophobia” law which would be an Islamic blasphemy law in all but name. But everyone would know what it was and many people would vehemently oppose it, so a jury of mainstream citizens would be very unlikely to return a “guilty” verdict.
Therefore, Labour needs to remove the juries first, knowing that it could rely on establishment blob judges to prevent any politically inconvenient acquittals. After a few show trials, Labour could then return to the “community leaders” and say “we’ve delivered what you wanted, now you deliver the votes”.
@Fraser Orr: “… the controls on that are obvious, right? You get to volunteer for jury service and then the court picks when and which case, and you are limited to one time per year or one time per two years, or whatever …”
I doubt you’d get enough volunteers for that. It might work if you made it an opt-out system.
Apart from that, though, the main problem is that a jury of volunteers is not a random sample of the population, it’s a sample of a self-selected group with reasons for volunteering that may or may not include “civic duty”.
And these values you hold, while admirable, why do you think everyone should share those same values?
A thorough and close reading of Toqueville should provide something in the way of an answer to your question.
Just FYI, if some here don’t already know this: In America you don’t volunteer for jury service; rather, you are summoned to it. Names are selected at random from the registered voter rolls. It is a civic obligation and you are required to show up, or face a penalty if you don’t. If you want to get out of jury duty you may contact the court and give it a good reason for letting you go. Also, most jurisdictions typically have the rule: one day, or one trial. If you aren’t selected for a jury on the day you show up, you’re done and you can go home.
@Barbarus
I doubt you’d get enough volunteers for that. It might work if you made it an opt-out system.
If their employer was required to keep paying them, then a LOT of people would love the opportunity to skive off from work for a week or two. “Do you want to work in this boring factory stuffing boxes for amazon, or have the chance to sit around a jury room doom scrolling, texting your mates, or having a nap?” I was just talking to a lady friend of mine last night who was so stressed about work she was crying horribly, just wishing she could somehow afford to get away from the strain and stress of it all, a break at least for a few weeks. I’m sure she’d love to take the county up on its offer.
Apart from that, though, the main problem is that a jury of volunteers is not a random sample of the population, it’s a sample of a self-selected group with reasons for volunteering that may or may not include “civic duty”.
But it isn’t that now either. Juries are mostly composed of people who weren’t smart enough to watch a couple of YT videos to learn how to get out of it. For sure there are some people who do it out of a sense of duty to the community, but most people do it because they have to. Which is to say we skim off a lot of the people who probably have the smarts to do a best job possible.
@Budge Hinman
A thorough and close reading of Toqueville should provide something in the way of an answer to your question.
With all due respect, if you have something to say, say it.
1. Maybe it’s different here, but most people I know – and my friends tend to have been alive a long time – have never been summoned for jury duty. And I’m in some big counties here.
2. Speaking as a defense lawyer, the last thing you want are people who are eager to serve on a jury. If you are being tried for a crime by the State, you want people who are pissed at the State that they have to show up. This probably affects my opinion on this issue.
3. Waaaay back when, I was head law clerk for the head judge of the second-largest MN county court system. We all knew that jurors were getting a raw deal – no one really argues that point – but we also knew that any citizen being tried desperately needed a jury. So we, together with our local defense bar, set up a new office – got state funding and everything – for a juror ombudsman. That person took complaints, and then did stuff about the complaints. Judges were “educated” as to proper respect for jurors, efficient use of their time, etc. Jurors were decidedly happier after that.
I know what you’re saying, Fraser Orr, and I don’t disagree. But we cannot let the State decide that it’s too inconvenient to allow us to be ultimately judged by our peers and not agents of the State alone. That way lies England.
‘In the UK jurors are technically not paid at all, but can claim allowances to cover lost earnings…’
Plus a ‘per diem’ token amount for meals. Whichbif you every have the misfortune to serve at Snaresbrook is best not spent in the Jury room cafeteria!
With all due respect, if you have something to say, say it.
I’ll keep that in mind. With all due respect.
But here’s a short answer: Jury duty as an obligation for citizens is part of the social contract (in America).
Also, the obligation of jury duty, when summoned, is not exactly an onerous burden. As bobby b. observed, it’s something of a rarity to be summoned.
You are also obliged to shovel the snow off your sidewalk, or face fines if you don’t. In Indiana, where I live, that is more of a burden that the prospect of being summoned for jury duty. Much more of a burden, this year. And you don’t get paid for it! The horror, the horror! But I’m not complaining. Life can be inconvenient at times, and then you die.
You can insure against being called for jury service.
Jury service is hardly a sacrifice – not compared to, for example, being sent to Ukraine. The British government is starting to admit to some of the casualties there.
We need to respect people who make real sacrifices – risk of injury and death, rather than complain about being asked to jury service.
If you are employed (not self-employed) and in a relatively sane county/city in the US jury duty is usually not that onerous. If you are self employed and live in a totally dysfunctional city like San Francisco are white middle class and native English speaker then jury duty is a huge burden which should be avoided at all cost. Going as far as to ignore the jury duty summons.
For various reasons only got called for jury duty once. SF has a population of 800K and a per capita civil legal caseload that is even worse per capita than Civil Litigation City – LA. The actual adult jury pool in SF is less than 300K and probably closer to 200K. They may bring in 100+ potential jurors but due to lack of English, who they work for etc that very quickly becomes around 20. Who are overwhelmingly white middle class etc. In a city where that demographic is less than 20%.
It quickly became evident my first day in the court than not only was there going to be no escape from the case but I was being eyed as the jury Forman. When the case was outlined turned out it was just a wrangle over how much compensation was going to be paid out for an accident involving a city vehicle. That was it. They wanted to waste two plus weeks of our time (and lost income) for what should have been simple binding arbitration case.
Luckily I read the local news assiduously even when travelling and it quickly became evident that I remembered the accident. It had got a lot of local coverage at the time. And it was obviously a true accident. Neither party was negligent. It was just unfortunate timing. 3 second ether way and no one would have been hurt.
I made the judge aware that I knew of the accident and the circumstances and after a quick discussion in their chambers and after I mentioned the magic phrase “tabula rasa” that was the end of my jury duty. So far.
In California at least there is no penalty in purely civil litigation for the party calling for a jury duty. In this case they were just angling for a bigger payout from the insurance company and were willing to waste several weeks time of people who had better things to do.
In other counties I know in California the situation is not so bad. In Marin County and San Mateo County jury duty is not quite so onerous. Or for so many frivolous cases. In SoCal LA city and county can be as bad as SF but Ventura County, Santa Barbara County etc not so bad.
So very different from the UK. In London from what I have heard its a week in the pool and most cases end in a day or two. Not 2+ weeks for a simple insurance payout disagreement.
As for Lammy. Everything I’ve seen and heard is that backlogs in the UK are due to an incompetent CPS and way too many “civil rights” lawyers being made judges. The same problem as in the US. In the US the worst judges are either former public defenders or “civil rights” lawyers and all the worst true miscarriages of justice (criminals getting off scott free) in recent time are due to these type of judges.
@Budge Hinman
I’ll keep that in mind. With all due respect.
I wasn’t being snarky, I’ve found your contributions here interesting. My point was that you make some vague allusion and somehow I am supposed to understand it. All I’m saying is make an argument explicitly rather than allusion or reference. This approach is not at all conducive to discussion — how am I supposed to respond to a point you don’t even make?
But here’s a short answer: Jury duty as an obligation for citizens is part of the social contract (in America).
Where is this social contract written down so that I can read it and know what my obligations are? The notion of a “social contract” is very popular among the same sort of people who love the word “duty” where they can impose their views on other people. The social contract, for some people, no doubt includes the obligation to provide free healthcare, to serve in the military, to call trans people by their preferred pronoun, to give free needles to homeless drug addicts and so on. As soon as you accept the notion of some vague social contract you open yourself up to every crazy statist idea. If you accept the idea of a social contract you must accept the fact that YOU don’t get to decide what is on that social contract. On the contrary, the worst people in the world generally speaking get to define what is on it. Or worse still, not define what is on there so that they can use it as a hammer whenever they want.
So I reject your notion of a social contract.
Also, the obligation of jury duty, when summoned, is not exactly an onerous burden. As bobby b. observed, it’s something of a rarity to be summoned.
That’s not true. Jury duty is rare but when it happens it can often be extremely burdensome. See Rude Guest testimony right here. Conscription is also very rare, but it is still a horrific thing that should not be allowed. If you want me to do something that you consider my “duty”, convince me, don’t threaten me.
You are also obliged to shovel the snow off your sidewalk, or face fines if you don’t.
In some HOAs you face fines if you paint your door the wrong color. Near where I live there is a “historical district” where you face huge fines if you put the wrong shingles on your roof or put a gnome on your front yard. I don’t live in either the historical district or a place with an HOA because I hate these sorts of meddlesome rules. But some people are happy with it, in fact prefer it. Which is to say you can chose to submit to these sorts of rules or not by your choices. You cannot decide whether to submit to conscription onto juries or the military.
I should say though, for the record, that there are no gnomes in my front yard.
@Paul Marks.
Jury service is hardly a sacrifice – not compared to, for example, being sent to Ukraine.
Sure, but getting strip searched at the airport every time you want to go on an airplane is hardly a sacrifice compared to being sent to Ukraine. After all, most people rarely go on a plane more than a couple of times a year.
But I still object to it.
tfourier: I was summoned for jury service in Central London and asked to sit on a four-month fraud case. Given I am the owner/editor of a small news service and media company, this would have been a disaster. Also, given the nature of what I cover in the banking sector, I knew of several of the institutions named on the indictment, and the judge said that was a reason for me to be excused. But my status may not have been able to get me off.
I think the idea of paid jurors, with expertise and a degree of leeway, who can do complex, long trials, would be good. Also, having more “expert” jurors could shorten fraud trial times because they could get through cases quicker.
Also, as governments insist on creating ever more complex compliance regulations in finance, so criminal offences linked to this become more difficult and drawn out, so maybe Mr Lammy and others in government should address that problem.
Fraser Orr – I take your point Sir.
However, the alternative to jury trials is trial by judges – and that is likely to be worse.
For example, I can now be sent to prison, for the sort of stuff I write here, for three years – without any right to trial by jury.
True a jury might be made up of leftists who would send me to prison – but I have far less chance in a trial before a judge appointed by some establishment committee.
Johnathan Pearce – I would be happy to be one of these paid specialist jurors, I would work seven days a week if need be.
However, the chance of David Lammy, or any other member of the government – elected or unelected government, allowing someone like me to be such a paid juror is zero.
You know the sort of people they would select.
Remember they HATE Justice (their loyalty is to “Social Justice” which is the opposite of justice) and they believe the United Kingdom (and all Western nations) to be evil – and wish to destroy “reactionary” Western Civilization – and this is true of the establishment generally, not just a few members of the establishment.
@Fraser Orr
The primary reason for not having volunteer jurors is you’ll get the people want to be volunteer jurors. People who want to decide on someone’s guilt or innocence. I’d imagine that the last thing we’d want. We all know how such people can be. Unbiased they ain’t
The Australian system is that your employer is required to pay you at normal rate while you’re on jury duty, and without any impact on your leave, etc. They also recognise that doesn’t work for people on irregular income, it’s listed on the form as an accepted excuse. They’re fairly strict about it, you have to be like me – a casual employee with no fixed hours – and provide a written explanation with some sort of evidence. I got selected last year, sent them a month’s worth of timesheets plus the corresponding payslip (for employer details if they wanted to check) which the usual irregular days/nights/weekends. I’ve been given an exemption for a couple of years.
It’s not that I wouldn’t be willing to do it, but I have no idea how my employer would deal with it. I’m not a contractor, I’m on the books, so they would possibly have some responsibility, but by the letter of my contract they could treat it the same as when I go on holiday or sick, no pay. They’re pretty good though so perhaps they would have averaged my pay over the last six months or something.