De Menezes inquest: jury continues deliberations into Stockwell shooting - Telegraph.
This seems to be the only good news of the day. No jury needs six days simply to comply with directions as clear as were given by the coroner. Someone in that jury room wants to return a (correct) verdict of unlawful killing. I hope they are replaying 12 Angry Men in there and that they all find the courage to ignore the coroner's directions.
I have never served on a jury (the law only changed to allow lawyers to serve after I left Britain). However my wife has served and was very impressed. The members were from a wide range (from a Man Utd WAG to an unemployed person). The jury is the last institution in Britain in which I have any faith. Obviously no institution is perfect, but I would rather be tried by my peers than by judges who have now been selected by Labour for 11 years. I have a friend who is a judge selected before Labour came to power and I am told that the recent recruits are relentlessly "right on"
Posted by: Tom | Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 03:33 PM
I have been on a jury that was like 12 angry men. The defence and prosecution made clear cases, the expert witness made it clear, the judge gave a very clear summing-up. My fellow jurors all missed the points, they just wanted the defendant strung up.
After 2 hours we were called back. The judge was incredulous that we hadn't concluded in 20 minutes, it was that obvious.
It took me the whole day to bring round the jurors one by one to the conclusion the evidence was pointing to. If I hadn't been there the defendant would have been found guilty, which would have been a profound miscarriage of justice. The whole experience left me very worried about our justice system. The other shocking thing was how openly racist and xenophobic my all white fellow jurors were in a group of people they had never met. The defendant was not British so it had a bearing.
I think it was the devil's kitchen where I read "if you are charged of something and you are not guilty, you want a non-jury trial, you can't trust a jury to get it right. If you did do it, you should go for a jury because there's a good chance their incompetence will see you free."
Goodness knows what the DeMenezes jury will come back with - too much randomness in the process to predict.
Posted by: marksany | Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 03:22 PM
One hopes that they can see that an innocent was executed by the state, and that the police have lied and lied again
Posted by: Guthrum | Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 03:02 PM