The Metaphysics of Juries

I'm on Jury Service this week. The first trial was stopped short when the main witness for the prosecution – a twenty-year-old girl whose boyfriend, the Crown were about to allege, had put a knife in her back during a drunken argument – maintained in contradiction to her statement to the police that it was an accident. The Crown dropped the charges, though frankly I think they would have had a good run at it despite her testimony – and we returned a verdict of Not Guilty on the judge's direction. At least we were sworn in. The second case plead out at the last minute, so we never even entered the Court. The third one is on-going, so I can't comment.

The thing is this. Down in the waiting room, the usher calls out fifteen or sixteen names. You sing out when you hear yours and line up, to be taken to the Court. At this point, you are not a Jury, because there's fifteen of you and you haven't been sworn, but you are more than a bunch of guys following someone in a black cloak. You're a Jury-In-Waiting. Not a Jury, and yet one. In-Waiting, a sort of limbo, each juror in an incoherent state of being and not-being a juror, only fixed in one eigenstate or the other by being called by the Clerk and swearing-in. In a state of Waiting, ready to do what's needed, excluding all other things, but yet no acting either. It's an old phrase from a more expressive time.

It's my third time, but they changed the rules a couple of years ago. Once you were done after the third time. Now they can call you every two years. If they do call you, don't try to get out of it – do your duty. It's mostly sitting around, but juries are so important that every Labour and the odd Conservative government tries to get rid of them, or restrict the cases they can hear. When you speak as a Jury, no-one can ignore you, gainsay you or contradict you, you are forbidden by law from explaining your decision and they can't ask. Only God-like senior judges in courts of appeal can over-rule the twelve of you.