JURORS TODAY DO GET PAID AND STILL TIME IS WASTED.......

THE TIMES.

11^th OCT , 1937. 

JURIES AT THE OLD BAILEY

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES...........

 

 Sir, From time to time I have read in your columns complaints about jury service at the Old Bailey and have wondered whether there was any substance in them.

Any doubts I may have had have now been resolved. With some 200 others I recently completed my term as a petty juror for the September session. My total time in the jury box was 14 hours, but I had to attend on no fewer than 10 days, spread over four broken weeks. As juror in waiting I had ample opportunity of learning and relearning the topography of all four courts, but I should readily have been satisfied with a less protracted course of study. To most persons, I believe, jury service in the criminal courts is not a pleasant job: it is, however, a duty entailed by citizenship and must, of course, be performed, even at the cost of inconvenience and sometimes financial loss. But surely the loss and inconvenience should be made as little as possible. The authorities can presumably foresee within reasonable limits which cases will be short and which will extend over several days, and it should not be difficult to arrange for jurors a timetable which will show them a little more consideration than seems to be shown at present. I have little doubt that if the expenses of jurors had to be paid there would be fewer wasted days for A JUROR IN WAITING.