IT'S NOT ALWAYS THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD.

Rough justice for jurors when the call-up comes

Some see it as a important and rewarding civic duty, but serving on a jury can be a heavy financial burden to carry, writes Jon Robins

• The Observer,
• Sunday June 12 2005

We might like to think of ourselves as good citizens willing to do our bit - until that moment when an envelope drops on to our doormats containing a jury summons.

The jurors on the Jubilee Line fraud trial might have began their trial aglow with civic pride, but when the case collapsed last month after almost two years spent in an Old Bailey courtroom (more often than not cooped up in a basement while lawyers argued in court) they were livid.

It was 'a nightmare and a total waste of taxpayers' money', fumed one juror, Orla O'Loughlin, after Britain's longest corruption case ran into the buffers just before the Easter break. The trial concerned two businessmen accused of bribing London Underground executives over contracts to build the £3 billion Jubilee Line extension. Jurors do not usually discuss their experiences; but because this trial collapsed and, since their efforts were in vain, it has been hard to shut them up.

As a result of serving on a jury, it was reported that O'Loughlin was forced to cancel her wedding and had to borrow money for her mortgage on six occasions because jury payments were late. She also missed out on promotion and pay rises in her job as a technical analyst at a mobile-phone company.

It was also reported that another juror, Alison Bean, was forced to sit in court when she had morning sickness. 'They would call me into court and make me sit with a sick bowl,' she said. Bean was made redundant during her jury service and O'Loughlin has said her job prospects were uncertain.

The longest fraud trial came to a juddering halt when another juror in effect went on strike after he felt unable to continue because of financial problems.

You never know when the judicial tombola will select your name at random from the electoral register - last year 409,807 people were summoned and, of those, 186,024 sat on juries. Unless you are mad, a criminal or have already done your bit in the past two years, you are unlikely to give jury service the slip.

Nor should you expect the country's gratitude to extend to decent financial compensation. At the Jubilee Line trial, the lawyers were told to keep their earnings secret for fear of generating 'resentment and anger' among the jurors. One barrister was reported as having made more than £1 million in legal fees from the trial.

For the first 10 days of jury service you receive a daily rate of £56.96 (£28.48 if it is four hours or less) and from then on £113.93. If a trial runs beyond 200 days, then it is £200. However it is rare for a trial to run for more than a fortnight and you might be able to recover travel, childcare and other expenses. Employers will usually pay staff on juries, but there is no requirement. As of last April, it is illegal to sack someone on account of jury service.

'I'd probably have paid them to do it,' says Fiona Bawdon, who edits a specialist legal magazine. 'It was fascinating and felt quite a privilege to be making decisions which would have such an impact on peoples' lives - not just the defendant, but also the victims.'

She was the foreman of a jury in an armed robbery case at Wood Green Crown Court in North London last year and admits to being 'a bit disappointed' when the jury was not needed for a second week. 'If you believe there's a value in the idea of someone being judged by their peers, then you should be ready to give up your own time to do it,' she says.

Trevor Grove, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, agrees: 'My advice to anyone called upon to do jury service is: "Do it". It's an important democratic and civic duty and the jury is an institution that has withstood many attempts to shake it but it remains vastly popular.'

Grove recounted his own experiences of a four-month jury trial concerning a kidnapping in his book The Juryman's Tale, which contains a survival guide to jury trials.

Like many jurors, the journalist attests to the 'strange chemistry' that comes over 12 very ordinary men and women - which in his case included a postman, a Heathrow airport cleaner, a retired schools inspector and a Sainsbury's checkout lady - who 'rise to the occasion' to fulfil an 'awesome public role'. 'It is a remarkable phenomenon,' he reckons. 'I have met few ex-jurors who were not struck by it, and few who did not find it unexpectedly rewarding.'

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. Daniel Mazliah, of the Federation of Small Businesses, says: 'In a small firm it is incredibly difficult to find cover if anyone goes on jury service. If there are four people working for a firm and you lose one, then that's a quarter of your business down. On top of that, there is the unpredictability of jury service - is the case going to go on for one day or three weeks?'

The FSB would like the government to exempt small business from the jury services. It offers its members jury service compensation cover of up to £100 per day if they, or an employee, are called for jury service.

It is unusual for insurers to offer insurance policies to cover jury service for individuals, although legal expense insurance policies sometimes feature jury service cover.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, recently vowed that 'the days of the 18-month trial are over'.

The government has already passed laws which will allow judges to sit without juries in complex fraud trials and where participants may be subjected to intimidation.

However, for this to be enacted there has to be a vote of both Houses of Parliament, which will be strenuously opposed by MPs, peers and civil libertarians who regard the jury as the cornerstone of British Justice.

But at the same time as battling to restrict the right to a jury trial, ministers have come down hard on jury-dodgers by closing down the 'middle-class opt-out'.

The absence of professionals from the jury box has fuelled an unfair caricature of juries as 'over-peopled with the feckless, the grudge-bearing and the unemployed', as one jury-bashing commentator put it. Exemptions for a raft of occupations, such as doctors, dentists, the military and the legal profession, were abolished last April. 

 

Judges can be very kind - but take some knitting for the boring bits

 

So what words of wisdom do experienced jurors offer? Trevor Grove emphasises that it is crucial for them to take notes so as to keep track of what is going on in court.

Try and pick your dates to do jury service. Requests for deferrals are usually granted and jury service can be deferred for up to one year - but can only be deferred once.

Don't assume that judges have hearts of stone. Mark Batchelor, a mature law student who served last year, was impressed at the response one his jurors received when asked if court could start half an hour late to enable him to take his son to school on his first day. 'Our judge was great and the day before he calmly explained we would be starting later than normal without mentioning the name of the person or making them feel silly and rude for daring to ask such a thing. That to me was a sign that maybe the court system isn't as stuffy as it first appeared.'

Jurors who expect a two-week holiday could be in for a nasty surprise. Joanne Share-Bernia, a psychologist who has treated jurors, warns that hearing evidence in, for example, a child abuse, rape or armed robbery case can be harrowing. 'It could trigger memories for jurors that would be very distressing and effectively render them not capable of making proper decisions,' she says. 'When the juries are making their decision, these people stand back or get particularly angry. Therefore we aren't getting the results we want from in terms of an independent and objective decision, and they come out of it being one of the worst experiences of their lives.'

And the wheels of justice can turn painfully slowly. Grove says that 'doing nothing' is a big feature of jury service. He advises jurors to go prepared with 'books, the knitting and work'. They are allowed to use mobile phones, plug in lap tops and have personal stereos in the waiting areas and most courts provide working areas for them.