Those who have completed Jury Duty in the UK - what aspects about the process surprised you?
Posted by izbiz88@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 115 comments
Were there any elements that you were expecting to happen differently, and what were they?
thewednesday1867@reddit
I sat around for two days, reading a book (Sicily ‘43 by James Holland) before being dismissed and told I didn’t need to go back.
Temporary_Ebb9486@reddit
I think this is shameful and sociopathic. We live in a society and for it to function we have civic responsibility. To sneer like a 14 year old and brag on here, it’s appalling. I bet your peers say this is “classic” you.
ServerLost@reddit
Go outside pal, you need some fresh air.
Temporary_Ebb9486@reddit
Oh wait, have I missed something ? In my mind your reading during the trial !
AlessaDark@reddit
No. They were reading while waiting.
pafrac@reddit
Yep, pretty much the same when my wife was called up. Told it was a very serious case and to expect it to take some time ... then a couple of days later they said, actually the trial's not going ahead now, you can go home, we don't need you any more. Never even found out what the trial was about.
At least she got expenses.
ohhallow@reddit
I had that for four days and then got plonked on a bastard trial midday on the Friday.
thomasthetanker@reddit
So I just need to take a copy of that book with me...
Dazzling_One_4335@reddit
That there's absolutely zero attempt at keeping the accused, their family/friends or defence witnesses away from you when you're not in the actual courtroom. You can be entering/exiting the building with them right before you, standing outside at during lunch etc. They know who you are and you know who they are and it doesn't feel safe.
pizzaosaurs@reddit
I was a witness to a case and I was behind a screen with only the jury, lawyers and judge etc able to see me. Even came in through a secret door and everything.
It feels crazy that they didn't keep you separate! It was literally one of the angles I had the defence lawyer tried to use in that I would have had a biased view point of what happened because I had spoken to the victim. Pointed out that I talked to him for 5 minutes as I was trying to make sure he was ok and gave him my details as he called the police. In fact I spoke to an elderly couple who saw more than me and told me what they saw... You could be biased or threatened during lunch!
TheLittleGoat@reddit
Yeah I had our defendant getting his bag searched right behind me in the queue and I hated it. Absolutely hated it.
gkrgreat@reddit
Omg yes 😂 we were warned as we left, having found a guy guilty, that he would be released that afternoon pending his sentencing, which was to be completed in a couple of weeks. We were told he would likely be getting the train back home, so “maybe avoid the train station for the next couple of hours”. I felt so safe, not.
acmhkhiawect@reddit
There was actually a case within my court of a juror being approached by a family member of the accused. I can't remember exactly what happened as a result but they take it incredibly seriously! I think most people are sensible enough not to try anything, knowing it will only be detrimental to them/their family.
Thread942@reddit
Found myself in a car park lift one morning with one of the defendants mid way through a trial. They ask, “going down?”. Had to bite my lip to not respond to that one.
RhubarbSalty3588@reddit
Yes this I found unbelievable also.
Bubble-Master96@reddit
Omg this. I saw them constantly outside the building. They could have followed me back to my car very easily.
-C80-@reddit
I felt this too! There was no attempt to keep us separate or anything and although nothing happened, it was still really intimidating walking to my car afterward and seeing the accused’s family and friends in the same car-park!
gkrgreat@reddit
I was surprised by how heavy it felt to make the guilty decision. It was a young guy, obviously not too sharp - he kept on mentioning previous similar crimes where he had been sent to young offenders, and the judge kept telling him to stop bringing it up as it can affect the juror’s opinion of him, but he just wasn’t getting it.
He clearly did it and his story was a mess of absolutely insane excuses that made zero sense. He very much deserved to be found guilty but… like shit man, he’s been in juvie multiple times previously, now he’s aged into grown up prison, where he will likely just meet more people that will lead him down the bad path he’s on… it’s clearly not going to help him at this point. And you’re the one putting him in that position, by making the decision that you have no choice but to make
Hopefully I’m wrong and he eventually turned a corner, met some decent people or whatever. But it’s kind of rough to feel like even when you’re doing the ‘right’ thing in the scope of the process… is it really?
Worse for the criminal though, I’m under no illusions there. I suspect I’d feel very differently if it had been a violent/abuse crime vs relatively petty drug related stuff too
skimney@reddit
How awful the prosecutors were at what is their only job. Unprepared, confused about basic facts of the cases, asking the most absurd pointless questions.... I know they're underfunded, but these were the cases that actually got to court. They only prosecute if they think they can get a conviction.
coupepixie@reddit
It's usually because they are so short staffed that the barristers often only get the case the night before or morning of the trial.
zilchusername@reddit
What about the defence were they any better?
Creative-Response554@reddit
The defence usually have it easy because CPS is so woefully inadequate.
There's money to be made in defence if going private, not so for prosecutions or duty solicitor so the quality of those is dramatically lower than the quality of a private defence solicitor/barrister.
The workload they have is also massive.
I saw CPS fail to prosecute a threatening communications trial 3 times by failing to bring the evidence, namely the screenshots of him threatening to beat the shit out of her and her new boyfriend in front of their (accused and her) son to show his kid what a big man he is.
We ended up having to release him. He was in 3 weeks later on a GBH charge for, you guessed it, beating the fuck out of his ex and her new fella.
It'd be funny how incompetent they are if the real world consequences of it weren't so dire.
gkrgreat@reddit
Yeah, agreed at the woeful under preparedness in some cases! I had a cybercrime one, and the prosecution amounted to “we don’t understand how he did it, but he deffo did”. Plus the lead detective had been promoted to a different force or team or whatnot after the investigation but before the trial, so the detective being questioned hadn’t even been the one investigating and therefore had no idea what to say to most questions. Not his fault personally, he was doing his best, but it was pretty shambolic
The judge went to great lengths to stress before we went for deliberation that the prosecution have to have proved the case beyond reasonable doubt, so he was clearly trying to lead us to the correct conclusion of “he probably did it, but the case against him is so comically weak that we shouldn’t even be sitting here right now”
catninjaambush@reddit
I was surprised that every time you go into the deliberation room you have to do the Thriller dance routine.
liquidpagan@reddit
Oooh I did jury duty last year so have some thoughts!
Firstly unlike a lot of other people it seems. I had the most wonderful group of people on the jury with me, I honestly left thinking "if that's a cross section of Britain, then we're doing a lot better than I might have thought"
Secondly, just how much waiting around and how long some things felt, I appreciate there's a lot of evidence and stuff to get through, but at times it felt like we were in and out.
Thirdly, and possibly my favourite was the bit of sass from the judge, ofcourse he didn't say anything I don't think we hadn't already picked up on. But there was a moment towards the end were he asked the defendant some questions, and just ran rings around them. It was fascinating to see.
I honestly loved the experience, I think mostly for the novelty of it, but it was quite enjoyable.
SwansEscapedRonson@reddit
Really nice to hear a different take! I’m glad your experience had some positives
DBv1@reddit
It was a valuable opportunity to get a glimpse into our legal system but it made me believe that jury trials are flawed and might not be the best option. I am convinced that a different jury, presented with the same evidence might have come to the opposite conclusion. A lot of the decision making felt like it was about group dynamics rather than evidence and it surprised me how little of the evidence and arguments made in court over a number of days people seemed to remember. Personal beliefs definitely also played into people’s decision making.
Northerlies@reddit
I was surprised at how ill-prepared the prosecutors seemed, how flimsy one of the cases was - the prosecutor stopped mid sentence and said 'I am sorry My Lord, I cannot continue with this case', and at how diligent all members of the jury were in considering the cases before us. That aside, I was also surpised that I managed to defer my service from my busiest time of the year to the quietest. I took an earnings hit but nothing like what I would have lost had they refused.
hoistec@reddit
I was very surprised at just how thick and/or boneheaded some of the other jurors were.
Bubble-Master96@reddit
YES! I was on a sexual abuse case and I couldn’t believe some of the archaic attitudes towards the victims. It was so eye opening and genuinely infuriating. I cried coming home almost every night from our case, it was just awful.
Found not guilty in the end, evidence was shit.
agentrossi176@reddit
I had a similar experience. Even after the law on sexual assault was explained extremely clearly by the judge, we still wasted a huge amount of time convincing two women that a sixteen year old girl voluntarily going to a man's home does not mean she consented to anything sexual happening.
Convicted him though, and once we did all the 'plot holes' we'd been querying turned out to be tied to another case he'd already been convicted on, but we couldn't know during the trial so as not to prejudice us. Guy was a repeat offender, very glad we got there in the end.
abfgern_@reddit
And yet everyone moaned when it was suggested to use professional trained judges to deliberate the most minor cases, despite it being quite a sensible idea...
bibonacci2@reddit
100% my experience too. Not just thick but totally lacking agency, my lot. Of the 12 we had about three of us actually going through the evidence and the other nine just looked on with slack jaws.
If anyone ever suggests we can cut juries down from 12 people , make sure you write to your MP to reject. All sorts could go wrong as we needed 12 people to have enough competence in the room.
MineMelodic5454@reddit
I’m going to be generous and say the ‘thick’ ones on my jury were people who had never learned or were never taught to work their way through a decision logically. They simply had no ability to think of a problem to solve in terms other than their initial opinion. It was all emotion, all knee jerk opinion. The more we tried to have a step by step conversation about the evidence and arguments the less they engaged and the more they dig themselves into defending their view, with no ability to justify it. Shows you what a bubble I’m in that I’d never met anyone like that.
Digital-Dinosaur@reddit
I work as a digital Forensics expert and often get called as an expert witness. Some of the questions the jury raise sometimes are absolutely astonishing
bulletproof_vest@reddit
Oh my god. Yes. Being stuck in a room with a woman repeatedly going “I don’t care what anyone says, if you get behind the wheel of a car drunk, that’s dangerous driving” despite how the judge had taken great care to explain he had already been charged for drunk driving and we were there to ascertain whether, sobriety aside, what he did was dangerous driving, another thing that he very carefully explained and the difference.
Most infuriating wasted hours of my life going back and forth with her
smoulderstoat@reddit
It could have been worse. When Vicky Pryce (wife of Chris Huhne MP) was on trial for fraudulently taking his speeding points, the jury sent the judge a note with a list of questions that were so catastrophically stupid that he discharged them and started all over again with a different jury.
Chevalitron@reddit
I remember that. Makes you wonder how useless these people are in their ordinary lives.
RhubarbSalty3588@reddit
Also we were sent for deliberation at 12.50pm (10minutes before we were allowed out for dinner). One juror said "let’s make our deliberation really quickly so we dont have to come back after dinner!!!!"
RhubarbSalty3588@reddit
Exactly what I was going to say.I couldn’t believe that such an important possible life changing procedure was left in the hands of the jurors I was with. One of the chosen jurors on her way into the court room said "if this is a sex abuse case,il make sure he goes to jail" a fellow juror nodded and agreed. The usher luckily overheard them and dismissed them from the jury!! For the record it was a sexual abuse case.
shanna811@reddit
We went back in the morning to begin our deliberations amhad a verdict in ten minutes and some of them wanted to stay because they pre-ordered their lunch. That didnt happen and we were on our way home by 11:30.
Also the prosecution made the ridiculous argument that the guy should have dug through his bag and just grabbed his keys and phone when told to leave rather than just grab his packed backpack and take the whole thing with him. The police officer who had just testified and was listening to the rest of the proceedings looked at us and knew they had just lost all the additional charges that came from taking the backpack with him.
getoutmywayatonce@reddit
I’ve never done jury duty and tbh don’t want to, because this is exactly what I assumed it would be like lol. I’ve always feared the concept of a jury if I was one day a victim of something! Absolutely do not trust the level of collective common sense of a randomly plucked bunch of the public
SelfSufficientHub@reddit
"imagine how stupid the average person is then realise half of all people are stupider than that”. George Carlin
thegroucho@reddit
Good old George Carlin ...
Most of his comedy was a warning, not just entertainment.
zilchusername@reddit
Isn’t that a true representation of the public as it’s supposed to be?
BadestTony@reddit
Yes, this. Couldn't believe how stupid and prejudiced some were. A case where both perpetrator and victims were all drug users " I think they're all as bad as each other and we should find them all guilty".
Brilliant-Figure-149@reddit
I've done it three times, although I only actually got into the courtroom the first two times. There is an awful lot of sitting around wondering if you'll be selected then being sent home if not.
But most importantly it's called Jury SERVICE (not "duty").
Alternative-Emu2000@reddit
I wasn't expecting that the jury would be asked to leave the courtroom so many times in each session. According to the usher, it was usually because the judge had to make a decision on whether certain pieces of evidence and witness testimony was something we were allowed to hear. eg. referring to the fact that the defendant had initially pled guilty, but then changed his mind and decided to try his luck at trial.
Some of the other jurors really didn't seem to understand what a jury was, or why they were there - even after going through the induction process; and the very patient usher explaining it to them repeatedly eg. one of the jurors was genuinely surprised that it was our decision that determined the outcome of the trial; she assumed that we were just there to be witnesses to the court case, and it was up to the judge to decide whether the defendant was guilty or not.
Positive_Passion4817@reddit
Not too sound racist but in your estimation were they born in the UK?
PumpkinJambo@reddit
Yeah, last time I was on a jury there was one member who really couldn’t seem to grasp that we were making a ‘real life’ decision and that no-one was actually going to tell us if we’d guessed correctly or not. They didn’t appear to have taken in any of the evidence we heard and made absolutely no notes. It was infuriating.
izbiz88@reddit (OP)
This is mad! Guessing she’s not a true crime fan 😅
Jamz3k@reddit
I never want to be in the position where my freedom is left up a panel of my “peers”.
_Rookwood_@reddit
Speak for yourself. My peers are handsome and intelligent.
Scared-One9295@reddit
Don't get caught then
Positive_Passion4817@reddit
You realise people get accused and are actually innocent don't you?
loveyouronions@reddit
Oh you’d rather just one old chap who isn’t totally in touch with his common man?
pletro78@reddit
Not so much a part of the process that is common across the board but more a total freak event.
Pre selection we went into the court room and sat in the assigned general area - in no particular order. They went through the selection process of jurors, called out a name and it was a woman at the aisle end of our row, so off she went to the juror section.
Next name out of the hat was the bloke who was sitting next to her - off he went. Next name was the woman in the next seat to the guy who had just been picked. I casually joked with the bloke to my right that it’d be me next…… it was! We shared a wee chuckle and as I got up to leave, I said to him I’ll see him in the juror section in 2 minutes because he’ll be next. And yes, he got picked out of the hat.
Our entire row was picked in reverse order of how we sat down!
Deep_Top8433@reddit
The mathematical probability of that happening is insane!
RhubarbSalty3588@reddit
The memories are flooding back with these comments. There was a fellow Juror who was clearly a heavy smoker. When we were in the court room after only a few minutes she would become extremely agitated,often drawing the attention of the rest of the room. When we’re back in the deliberation room she would press the emergency button and ask to leave the room for a smoke literally every 10minutes,which she was allowed to do,and we was not allowed to deliberate without her in the room. When she would return we would ask her opinion,and she would just shrug and say il go along with what the rest think…..
Financial-Scar1683@reddit
I found it quite surprising that the juror next to me was such a heavy smoker that I almost threw up during sentencing from the smell
which would've been particularly awkward given that it was a murder trial
BoopingBurrito@reddit
I did Coroners Jury, so its a little bit different than a criminal court.
I was surprised at how...absolutely nothing was explained to us, about the case, about the process, about what to expect. Nothing. I assume its to avoid any potential for bias, but we were really left to pick things up as we went along with things only being explained when they became relevant (ie we were allowed to ask questions of witnesses which is super weird if you've never seen a coroners jury in action, not something you'd expect from general public knowledge of juries).
Also I was surprised at how many folk on the jury were getting financially screwed by being there. Half the room was being paid the court allowance from day 1, and most of the rest got the 1st day fully paid by their work then went onto the court allowance for the rest of the hearing. It was literally just myself and one other person who were getting paid in full for the whole hearing.
And probably explained by that, but still surprising to me...how few folk were actually interested or engaged in the process. It was quite an interesting case from both a medical and an ethical perspective, although very sad from a personal perspective. But half the jury had no interest in properly understanding the evidence, in discussing any aspect of it, and all they wanted to do was get out of the jury room as quickly as possible.
Distinct-Quantity-46@reddit
I’ve just been a witness at coroners court today with a jury (I’m a medical professional) I’ve been there the last 2 days and I have to say the jury for this inquest were fully invested, engaged and have asked plenty of questions of the witnesses over the last couple of days (although they didn’t ask me any questions)
MikeOne29@reddit
How low the threshold was for the judge to decide to take a break or pull in a new jury or delay things until tomorrow.
How some of the people in the dock weren't exactly bad people but had clearly just made a really bad decision at one point in their life to result in them being arrested and taken to court etc etc.
How must more evidence you get as a juror compared to what is reported in the news. When you get high profile cases and journalists tweeting updates or whatever having done Jury Duty you'll be able to tell that there is so much more context to trials that the Jury are privy to and the general public/news not aware about.
eelam_garek@reddit
They lock you in a room while you deliberate and have to press a buzzer to be let out again.
Creative-Response554@reddit
Never did Jury duty but I was a Prisoner Custody Officer for a while, one of the people in white shirts you see in the dock with the accused. We're there to look after them in detainment/catch em if they run.
What surprised me was how unbothered people are.
You'd get a few that were interested and actively listening, taking notes etc. Most stared off into the distance clearly itching to scroll on their phones or gossip or whatever.
People don't realise just how easy it is to end up in the dock. You get distracted for a moment while driving and accidentally kill someone or something like that, any kind of freak accident, someone attacks you on a night out and you fight back and seriously hurt them, you're liable.
Then, it's your turn to sit in the glass case with the gallery lookieloos staring at you and 10/12 people deciding your fate are disinterested and uninvested in the outcome because "I'll never end up there".
I guess you'd call it a lack of social responsibility.
phy6rjs@reddit
It’s a great point about how easily you could end up in the dock - traffic accident. Scares me to Shit
ashyjay@reddit
The annoying part is not knowing if you'll be called or not, and you still have to present in the mornings, and it's a nightmare if you work a fair distance from the court, so if you have to work during it you become a bit of a nightmare as no one can plan around you being there or not.
firemaster94@reddit
In Edinburgh you just call a number the night before and an automated voice tells you if you have to turn up or not. I was on hold for about a week and a half and wasn't needed.
Winston_Carbuncle@reddit
Surely just plan for you to not be there
SelfSufficientHub@reddit
That sounds fine until the employer finds out they are there and has to pay them. Not all workplaces can be flexible with how many productive staff can be incorporated without planning.
ChompsnRosie@reddit
I was foreman of a trial with quite serious charges. Standing up and having to say the word "guilty" 14 odd times and knowing it'll put another human in prison for a loooonnnng time was tough.
As a jury you came to the decision together, but being the person saying it really hit hard.
parklife980@reddit
Isn't that tempered by the fact you've sat through forensically-detailed, first-hand accounts of what they did? Is there a sense of " ...and they deserve it" after all that?
liquidpagan@reddit
As horrible as this may sound, and considering due to the crime if there was time I wouldn't have imagined it would have been too long, but I jumped at the opportunity to read it out. Just wanted to remember the experience of being in jury duty. Sounds a little morbid now I think on it
SpAn12@reddit
With hindsight it was one of the most obvious things that surprised me.
You can have a dozen people who have listened in to the same information, at the same time, over many hours. And they will come to wildly different conclusions.
And will then, with these different conclusions, they proceed to thrash it out over many more hours in a type of social peer pressure as individuals eventually back down. before a decision is reached.
In its own way I found it sort of frightening.
zilchusername@reddit
There was a tv program that simulated a court case and filmed the ‘jury’ the amount of bullying taking place was dreadful and I could easily image that happens in real life. The worse thing is I don’t think the jurors can complain about it as they are not allowed to talk about the case.
nouazecisinoua@reddit
Do you remember the name of the show? It sounds like an interesting watch
Jackiechan89@reddit
There was one on Channel 4 that was called “The Jury: Murder Trial”. They reenacted a real case using actors for the defendants, lawyers etc, but the jury were members of the public. The first series had two separated juries trying the same case, which was really interesting (and terrifying) as you get to see how differently the exact same evidence and testimony can be interpreted by two different groups of people.
medievalpangolin@reddit
Here you go: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-jury-murder-trial
Xivii@reddit
Jurors can, and are encouraged to raise issues with fellow jurors to the judge. Will it derail the entire process and make the time already spent an even bigger waste of time? Yup. But if you have concerns, you are supposed to raise it.
stiiii@reddit
Yeah I almost felt bad we sort of bullied people into changing sides. But they were utterly useless and wrong so I didn't really feel bad.
mostly_kittens@reddit
Everyone treats the jury system as sacrosanct but it is just a crude mechanism to guard against abuse by the powerful. It’s not a system for producing the correct outcome.
izbiz88@reddit (OP)
This is so interesting. I can’t help but imagine a kind of school / workplace scenario…ultimately, in social situations when there are disagreements, it is often those who shout the loudest and have the most presence that get the last word (whether they are right or not). Would you agree?
SpAn12@reddit
It is totally like that.
Then throw into that pressure cooker any existing outside bias that the jurors carry with them.
Also, that most won't be familiar with legal wording that they are even judging the accused against, which creates even more chaos.
And as a cherry on top, that many won't understand the scientific rigour (or not) behind evidence that has been presented. So even more carnage.
Honestly, it was wild.
izbiz88@reddit (OP)
Scary stuff!
justbiteme2k@reddit
The whole thing is so massively inefficient. Starts late, finishes early, 100s of times you're asked to leave the court room. It's not that they're all really relaxed, it's that there is zero attempt to get through a case in a reasonable timeframe.
You need someone from an F1 pit crew to observe it for a few days, then completely redesign the whole place, structure of proceedings, processes, the rooms, the R&Rs, everything.
angrytapes@reddit
I was surprised when we got to the deliberation part most of them didn't speak or seem to give a single fuck.
lj523@reddit
That after the first day I didn't have to go back in once for the entire time.
First day I went in, got called in for the case I'd been assigned to along with more people than were needed. We listened to an overview. Then they sent us out again and picked some to come back in. I wasn't picked and spent the rest of the day just hanging out at the courthouse until I was told I could go home. They gave me a number to call each morning to find out whether my "group" was needed that day and every day I called my group wasn't needed, so I sat at home playing video games all day until my time was up and I had to go back to work.
Fragrant-Prize-966@reddit
How cheap everything looked. I thought it was going to look like the Old Bailey, but it just looked liked an '80s office.
smedsterwho@reddit
I wore my own, much bigger wig to intimidate the judge
Creative-Response554@reddit
Yeah a lot of crown courts are quite new, and therefore built cheap.
I've been all over driving prison vans years ago and the Old Bailey is a very intimidating place to be, even for me working there.
Then as you say a lot look like cheap offices, some look exactly like TV sets, it's a weird mix.
Fun fact about the wigs, they never get washed. Ever. The darker/dirtier the wig, the longer the barrister has been, well, a barrister. Some younger/newer ones like to dunk theirs in tea to prematurely age them so they appear more competent than they actually are.
izbiz88@reddit (OP)
Yeah I do think it’s mad that wigs are the court place tradition they chose to keep
TippyTurtley@reddit
That I'd be called for such a horrific case that sticks with me to this day
Bubble-Master96@reddit
Me too. I think about the poor woman victim standing giving her statement, and the way the defence berated her so badly that the judge had to step in. Was a harrowing experiences.
PumpkinJambo@reddit
I think about the case I served on the jury for all the time. It was in 2017 but I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
TippyTurtley@reddit
I hope you find peace.
Xivii@reddit
How filthy and broken the building was. That one possibly shouldn’t have surprised me…
How long it took to get called. I got a whole week sat in a room doing nothing but chatting.
The law. There were parts of the law that aren’t actually the law, it’s just common belief it is. That had quite a few of us shocked that this was even a trial as the defendant admitted to what we all thought the crime was in front of us.
I was on a really good jury. No bullying, and everyone was given time and space to share their thoughts. It might have helped that the defendants were utterly stupid and I can’t see how we could have found them anything but guilty, so we were pretty much unanimous from the start. Think we were done inside an hour as we had a late start as the printer wasn’t working, and I was on the bus home by 1pm.
Zestyclose-Turn-3576@reddit
We were all dismissed after a couple of hours, as the judge spotted in the evidence that a much more serious crime had been committed than the accused had been charged with. Sounded like a complete screw-up.
I found the evidence impossible to make sense of though. All the events were presented in some random order ... couldn't make head or tail of it all.
Acrylic_Starshine@reddit
I did my first one during covid so i was surprised with everything as we had to queue up like robots, there was no canteen and had a limit for the toilet.
The waiting. Judge wants a coffee break.. come back in 20 mins.. judge wants lunch.. come back in a hour.. judge wants to go home.. out by 4:30pm instead of just doing it all in one day.
My second time (which also surprised me because its bullshit i got randomly picked twice), was ALL waiting and i wasnt picked at all.. so like 4 days doing nothing. Those quite comfy chairs became very uncomfortable.
Creative-Response554@reddit
Yeah judges can be like that
God forbid you be late though, I had a bollocking off one for being late once as an officer but my reason is that the 6 hour drive after getting out of the prison 2 hours late, plus the roadworks and an RTC held me up.
Judge doesn't give a shit, just likes to feel important and shit on their underlings.
im_not_funny12@reddit
How little time you actually spend in court.
We were there for a week and I think the longest I was ever in court was an hour and a half
JBB2002902@reddit
That I was allowed to take my handbag into the courtroom! I thought we’d leave them in the jurors deliberation room or something, but we were told to just take them with us into court.
Creative-Response554@reddit
Only the accused and the officers can't have any contraband with them, and even then the officers only can't because the accuseds might get ahold of it.
Off bailers (ones who come in from bail, rather than remand to prisons/just arrested from police stations) have to give up their property as well, partly because it makes it easy if they're convicted since their stuff is already bagged but also partly because once you step inside the dock, it's locked and you're in the custody of the court. If you're in the dock you're not a free person at that moment.
smoulderstoat@reddit
A lot of dodgy people in courts.
pafrac@reddit
The lawyers are the least of it.
ReflexArch@reddit
So much waiting around.
-C80-@reddit
I was going to say this! The whole process seemed so inefficient.
PumpkinJambo@reddit
How little time you actually spend in court. Started at 10, then there would often be a break, then back in, then lunch and then the afternoon session would end whenever the advocates or judge deemed it appropriate, never very late. Then having to leave court during sessions so that the advocates could speak to the judge to clarify things or present something new.
How much some other jury members didn’t appear to take things seriously. There was one who seemed to think we were on some kind of reality TV programme and someone would reveal before the end whether the accused was guilty or not, rather than us in the room coming to the conclusion.
People not understanding the ‘not proven’ verdict, but that won’t be a thing any more now it’s been removed.
It was a horrible case and I still think about it now, many years later.
StatisticianOne8287@reddit
The fact I never got called to go in for the whole two weeks!
LegoNinja11@reddit
The judges sentencing statement and the simplicity of the legal tests.
You work through loads of evidence deciding what's trust worthy and supported vs the guff made up by the witnesses and then the judge reads out his statement ...." You did X and Y and Z" while the jury sits back knowing X was enough to be guilty and we threw out Y and Z.
Also the legal test at the end that you're expected to assess the evidence against is often relatively simple. But they never tell you at the start what the tests are.
Superb-Ad-8823@reddit
Fortunately I had a couple of pints in the company of defence solicitor so was excused. Also he was a pal of a pal and heard stories about what they got up to in their youth.
hiking_n_stuff@reddit
How numbingly boring it was. Either waiting to be picked as a juror or listening to evidence on some cases. (The cases were technical and not violent)
Then flipped to not boring when it was a case where it was a serious matter. I was a foreman on one of them and it felt really surreal passing judgement
blueyonderbear@reddit
While waiting in the jury pool, the instant under breath ripple of ‘guilty’ when the accused was brought out.
That no one told you fact one of what was going on.
Evening-Web-3038@reddit
I suppose it surprised me a bit that the defendants had a clear view of us all lol. One of them glared at us the whole time haha, god knows why though because it made him look like the type of person who'd get in trouble with the law (not an impression you want to give off during your court hearing!).
damianvandoom@reddit
Less the process, but more the sudden realisation that the decision you come to is going impact many people in different ways.
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