UNHAPPY JURORS

Marathon trial cost juror her wedding and a job

Daily Telegraph 25/03/2005

BY : Caroline Davies

Two women reveal the price of doing their public duty in the Jubilee Line case.

 

 

Orla O'Loughlin: jury service took up 21 months of her life

 
For Orla O'Loughlin the collapse of the Jubilee Line corruption case brought bitterness, not relief.Like the other nine jurors trying this behemoth of a case at the Old Bailey, it had taken 21 months of her life.
It had forced her to cancel her wedding, to borrow money for her mortgage on six occasions because her jury payments were late, and it saw her miss out on promotion and pay rises at work.
When the £60 million trial came to a sudden end she discovered that the new job she had been offered was no longer available.
So on Tuesday, when the judge finally halted the case and the six defendants walked free after being formally acquitted, Miss O'Loughlin emerged blinking and bewildered from Court 12 to question the personal price she had been made to pay under a legal system she believes must be changed.
"It has been a nightmare," she said of the 21 months she spent tied to a trial that began back in June 2003.
It was, she said, 21 months of either sitting in court, or, more accurately mostly sitting in a basement jury room below the court, as lawyers spent hours - sometimes days -at a time in legal argument that jurors were not allowed to hear.
Equally unsettling, she said, were the times they were sent home, but required to ring in each afternoon to see if they would be required the following day.
"We were there to do our public duty," she said. "And we were doing our public duty. But, in the end, I think too much was asked of us."
Miss O'Loughlin, 28, from Uxbridge, west London, who worked for a mobile phone company as a network analyst, had planned to marry in September 2003 when she was called for jury service.
When told the case was expected to last 18 months, she cited the wedding as a possible problem but was informed it would not exempt her as nothing had been booked or paid for.
She obligingly rearranged it for June this year, having been told to expect the trial to end last December.
"I gave them a whole year's notice," she said. But, in January court staff asked her to "renegotiate" her dates. She refused.
By then she had booked the wedding venue and honeymoon in America. "Plans were already in place," she said. "Things had been paid for. I had no idea when I booked it all that the trial would still be continuing."
She found herself in the difficult position of not being able to meet bills. Although, because of the length of the trial, jury payments were doubled, there were occasions when the money was late.
"It was ridiculous. I had to borrow the money. Obviously I had bills and a mortgage."
But the final blow was losing her job. She had been poised for a permanent position - the next in line - when her jury service began.
Although her company tried to honour its commitment, things changed. "Two years is a long time," she said. "The company was not in the same position as it had been. So I missed out on promotion and career prospects.
"At the moment, I haven't a job to go back to.
"I think other jurors found that, too. Technology was moving on, and two years is a long time to be out of touch."
The case had centred on allegations of corrupt deals as the Government tried to have the Jubilee Line extension ready for the opening of the Millennium Dome. The collapse has provoked fierce debate about the future of juries in complex fraud trials.
Sickness - both among jurors and, in particular, one of the defendants - stress, holidays, and other jury problems led to delays so lengthy that the prosecution took 14 months, and not the estimated 15 weeks, to put its case.
Three jurors had paternity breaks after becoming fathers, while five lawyers also fathered babies.
When one juror last week said he felt unable to continue because of financial problems, Judge Ann Goddard finally decided the trial had become too unwieldy and would have to be stopped.
The jury was already down to 10 - one member having become pregnant and another discharged after being accused of benefit fraud. Indeed the jury had actually sat for only five days since last October.
"It was a shambles," said Miss O'Loughlin, "a complete waste of taxpayers' money.
"We were all shell-shocked," she said when the trial finally collapsed.
"We didn't really understand what had happened. It wasn't explained very clearly. It was 'OK, thank you and goodbye' and that was it.
"We were victims. Others involved in the trial have got their jobs and careers to go back to, and some of us jurors haven't. It is very unfair. And there is nobody to go to get help or advice.
"This is not the way to run a legal system. I really think they should do without a jury for the lengthy trials." Her hope now is that the review set up after the collapse of the case "will take our opinions into account".
Miss O'Loughlin added: "It was £60m wasted and it looked as if the jury were to blame. I just want to tell the story of the trial from the jurors' perspective because we didn't ask to be put in that position."
Helen Boyask, 62, the wife of a London accountant and recently retired after working at Harrods for 30 years, said she had appealed for financial assistance after sitting on the jury for a year.
"I talked to the expenses office at the Old Bailey. I was wearing a suit and they said 'You don't look as if you need the money'. It was insulting," she told The Guardian.
Both Miss O'Loughlin and Mrs Boyask said the issue was not the complexity of the trial, as they both felt they understood the issues well, but mismanagement.
What was intolerable, said Mrs Boyask, was the attempt to make a jury serve for such a long period.
"If the trial goes on for such a length of time, naturally you are going to get illness, pregnancies, paternity leave - people's wives have got to be allowed to have babies.
"And you are going to get a lot of resentment as well."