Ryan Clement

THE VERDICT
ryanclementblog April 20, 2024 Education, Legal
Channel 4, criminal law, guilty, jury, justice, Law, Legal, news, not guilty, Ryan Clement,
Ryan Clement barrister, the jury, The Jury Murder Trial, the jury system

by

Ryan Clement, LL.M., BA., BSc., FRSA, barrister

UNLIKE within some jurisdictions (where some jurors become celebrities in their own
right if chosen for high-profile cases), we in the UK are not privy to the deliberations of a
jury. If you haven’t yet watched or heard Channel 4’s experiment in, ‘The Jury; Murder
Trial,’ and are in a place where it can be aired, I urge you strongly to invest 200 minutes,
spread over four parts, of your time to watch or listen to it. Personally, and professionally, I
found it interesting, intriguing and disturbing in many ways.

Can we trust the UK’s jury system? Stream free on Channel 4 #C…
I often train managers on dealing with evidence when conducting grievance and
disciplinary hearings in the workplace, and how to seek to arrive at findings of facts on
which to base their conclusions.

HOWEVER, without wanting to spoil it for those yet to watch or listen to The Jury, it
soon becomes apparent that the evidence – the starting point or foundation from which
one (the juror) is supposed to build and formulate within their own minds what they
believed happened, as a matter of fact – gets relegated in place of and substituted for
matters unconnected (and at times unrelated) to the actual evidence before them (i.e.
based on issues that happened outside of the courtroom itself). We all have our biases,
whether we are conscious of them or not – hence the term ‘unconscious bias,’ of course.
But, sorry for the spoiler, what struck me, was the degree of influence by the louder (or
loudest) and the more frequently spoken of the jurors over the perceivably quieter (or
quietest) and less vocal. I can see how one can perceive the former as bullying the latter
into coming round to their (the former’s) way of thinking or desired outcome.

ALSO, another thought occurred to me. If not feeling bullied, the latter could mistakenly
take the frequently-talking-loudly-former as somehow possessing superior knowledge on
the interpretation of the evidence heard or, worse, having special insight on the
case and the law. I daresay that this pattern of behaviour is not confined solely to a jury’s
room. But what was troubling, amongst many other things, is in a criminal trial, someone’s
liberty is often at stake, and if not so, their reputation and or they face future adverse
repercussions based on decisions that were influenced by some personal experience of a
juror, the aired views of the loudest, the frequency of one’s verbal contribution etc. I would
also add, the confidence or the lack of confidence of a juror could (and did, in my view, in
The Jury) play a significant part on whether a defendant is deemed to be guilty or not of
the offence in question.

But haven’t we forgotten something? Where

does the evidence fit it? Answer? I have no
idea. Why? Because unlike with civil cases –
the jurisdiction within which I practice – juries
do not give reasons for their verdict. They are
no published facts found by them. We jump
from evidence to verdict: ‘Guilty!’ or ‘Not
Guilty!’ No ‘Why?’ or ‘How?’ An innocent
 person could be found to be guilty of an offence
and, yet, have absolutely no idea as to how the
evidence against them was interpreted or
weighed by those 12 privileged members of the
jury or why the evidence was found against
them. Could you imagine such torment?
Innocent and yet found guilty but have no idea
how or why your peers arrived at that
conclusion beyond the evidence heard – true or
false – and, therefore, unable to challenge parts
to prove your innocence or fight for your
freedom!

You may well, therefore, ask yourself whether

the current jury system is fit for purpose!

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-jury-murder-trial

Copyright © Ryan Clement 2024

ryanclementblog April 20, 2024 Education, Legal

Channel 4, criminal law, guilty, jury, justice, Law, Legal, news, not guilty, Ryan Clement,
Ryan Clement barrister, the jury, The Jury Murder Trial, the jury system

Published by ryanclementblog
I am a writer and barrister. I write about many legal, historical and social issues in which I
am interested. My latest book is 'Race Relations in Employment Law - Put simply in black
and white' View more posts

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