ANYONE who has ever seen the Reginald Rose classic 12 Angry Men would be forgiven for thinking jury service is a dramatic pain in the proverbial. As a right and a facet of a strong democratic society, it is right up there with having the vote, writes Bernie English.
Besides which, being part of the operation of the justice system and seeing a trial in action is better than any episode of The Traitors. You get to decide on the evidence who’s telling the truth.
Juries, any legal practitioner from court clerk to High Court judge will tell you, are the cornerstone of justice in a democracy.
Everyone accused of a crime is entitled to have people just like themselves decide if they did it or not, and if they did do it, were they in their right mind?
Why was I called for jury duty?
You’re registered to vote is how. Prospective jurors are selected randomly from the register of electors. The County Registrar issues a summons by post, which must be answered via jury.courts.ie or the form provided in the summons. Failing to reply or attend without a valid, excused reason can land people in legal hot water themselves.
Can I get out of it?
First of all, you shouldn’t want to. Jury duty is a civic obligation – like paying taxes, but a sight more interesting and not nearly as painful.
That said, certain professions are excused from serving, including: members of staff of either House of the Oireachtas; head of Government departments; civil servants; chief executive officers or employees of a local authority; HSE employees; harbour authority employees; school teachers and university lecturers.
In some cases, the court might need to know that you can’t be spared from work because no one else can fill your particular position.
Once upon a time, people who worked in abattoirs, slaughterhouses, and butcher shops were excused on the grounds that they were ‘desensitised’ to blood, gore, and violent scenes. Perhaps the advent of the internet has something to do with that no longer being the case.
What happens when I am summoned?
Prospective jurors will be brought to a room in the courthouse to answer a roll call. The court clerk pulls names at random from a drum and those jurors go into court.
If you need to be excused from service, and haven’t already been, now is the time to tell the judge. You can go up and tell them privately your reasoning..
You should also tell the judge if you know the person on trial or anyone who will be appearing as a witness – a list of witnesses is read out in advance.
If the man or woman sitting in the dock is your sibling, your spouse, your neighbour, or your bestie and you don’t tell the court, you could potentially end up in the slammer with them, so make it known early.
If, after all that, you’re still standing, you might hear the word “challenge” from either the prosecution or the defence. This means you go back into the jury pool and can be selected for another trial, as they have challenged your presence on the jury.
Don’t take it personally or be worried that they don’t like the cut of your jib. They don’t, but simply for their own purposes as a prosecution or defence – perhaps, to them, you might look too conservative, too empathetic to the accused, or too ‘radical’ to make an unbiased judgement.
I’ve been added to a jury panel – what now?
First of all, your employer is obliged to give you time to serve as a juror – during which time you will be paid as usual. You don’t lose any employment entitlements (such as holidays) for time sitting on a jury. If there’s any trouble with that, tell it to the judge, so to speak.
People who are self-employed and stand to lose earnings while serving can apply to be excused.
You should also let the judge know if you have a holiday booked in the near future. That said, don’t be tempted to imagine sand, sea, and sangria that you haven’t already parted with cash for – you can be asked to produce proof of booking.
Once all 12 jurors have been selected, they go away and elect a foreperson. There’s no special privileges for this, the foreperson just acts as a spokesperson for the jurors. It’s the same principal as sending an email rather than calling a meeting. Easier and less time wasting.
Jurors don’t get paid by the State or get travel expenses and get out of your mind any notions of sending nights in a posh hotel if a verdict hasn’t been reached – that stopped years ago when it was figured out that nights in posh hotels don’t produce verdicts any faster or better. Dinner and refreshments, however, may be provided.
Sometimes the jury will be told to retire to the jury room while the legal eagles make legal arguments. Don’t worry, as regards the case, you don’t need to know what is being said here. Odds are, it’s only the judge and solicitors and barristers who understand it anyway.
How long do I have to be there?
Some judges will keep to court hours – mostly 10am until 4pm – for jurors to sit and even once they have retired to deliberate. Others prefer to keep juries in the jury room until they’ve reached a decision on the basis that hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.
As regards how many days, weeks, months a trial might drag on – how long is a piece of string?
What if I can’t make a decision on the case?
Your fellow jurors – mostly the ones who have match tickets, a hot date, or somewhere else to be – may put on the pressure, but it is important not to be swayed.
A unanimous verdict is the best legal outcome, but after a certain (usually long) length of time, a judge can decide to tell the jury that a clear majority verdict is acceptable.
If the jury really can’t reach either kind of verdict, they will be dismissed and a new jury convened at some future date to do it all again. That will only happen if the judge feels they have taken enough time deliberating. Putting your hands over your ears and singing ‘la la la’ won’t get you out of there.
If, however, a decision is reached, the judge will thank the jury and may decide to excuse all the members from jury duty for a specified period of time.
But, by this time, you’ll have realised how fascinating the workings of the criminal justice system are and you’ll wish you could come back to court for more. Which you can. Any member of the public is entitled to sit in a court room and heard proceedings, unless the hearing is “in camera” to protect the identity of people under the age of 18 or victims involved in sensitive cases, such as sex crimes.
– Court Reporting Scheme