I recently had the pleasure of being invited to Jury service for two weeks. As there is nothing that one can really do to get out of it I had to go.
On the first day I was unsure of what to expect, and it is safe to say that I did not expect what actually happened.
I will not go into the details of the two weeks for obvious reasons, however, there are a few things that can be and need to be said.
The Judicial system is fully supported by the tax payer, and, as with many public sector organizations wastes a huge amount of money, our money.
The amount of wasted time within the system amazed me each day. Nothing seemed to happen on any trials until 11:30, lunch was taken at 1pm for an hour and then a session of a couple of hours was taken in the afternoon. This all means that the time actually spent doing cases must only be 4 hours a day.
I know what my boss would say to me if I told him I was only going to work 4 hours a day, believe me it would not be polite!
The extent of the wasted time and impact on peoples lives extends further than than just the Jury, witnesses and experts have to turn up, barristers, lawyers and court staff all hang about doing very little. This extent of waste just would not be allowed to happen in the private sector, any private sector business with that amount of waste would simply fail.
It does have to be noted that some of the waste can not be helped. Keeping people waiting due to legal arguments or the need to clarify evidence or matters outside the control of the court such as illness or witnesses being late can not be helped, however, I do believe that there is a huge saving to be had if correct and efficient management was brought into the system to properly manage the day to day activity in court. Those managers must have the authority to say what goes without the miss-guided policy that everything revolves around the judges and what they say.
There is also the matter of defendants changing their plea at the last minute which again causes a huge amount of wasted time any money. I would estimate that in the two weeks I was on Jury service, the percentage of cases that did not actually go to trial would be 75% and of those 25% that did go to trial a further 15% change their plea soon after the jury is sworn in. This means again wasted time for the court, for the witnesses who have had to turn up regardless and for the Jury who have at times sat around all day.
The main area where time and money is wasted is in the lack of forward planning for each day. An example during my two weeks was when we are sat around all day in the jury assembly room, we had been told at 10:30 that a trial was about to start, we were the only 15 jurors left, so we would be called for the jury panel.
As we had been told that the trial was about to start, we were held on tenterhooks, we could not leave, could not start any work (I took my laptop in) all we could do was sit and wait.
We were eventually called down at 3:45pm, the 12 Jury members were chosen an the trial as adjourned. To be fair on the Judge he did apologize that we had, had a wasted day, but when he told us why, in truth my blood boiled. He held up a list of all the cases that he had sorted out that day, none of which involved a jury. Surly the sensible thing to do would have been to deal with the one with a Jury trial first thing, swear int he Jury and then adjourn the trial and let everyone go for the day. We could then have returned to work rather than sitting around in a room watching the clock tick by.
That way the court would have saved the £30 per head for the second part of the day, witnesses and indeed defendants would not have had to be there and everyone could have got on with their lives for that day.
What can be done about this?
I am not sure, but in my opinion there needs to be a wholesale review of the system. As I mentioned before, experienced managers should be brought into manage the day-t-day activities and planning of the court.
In my opinion defendants should be given the chance to change their plea prior to the trial starting, this should be a final chance, it should be made clear that it is the final opportunity they will get and once the trial starts to is followed through to its conclusion. The ability to plea bargain at that time would be past.
Please do not get me wrong, I believe in the process, it is what this country is built on, but the waste, especially in these hard times when the countries deficit is spiraling out of control simply can not be justified.
No related posts.
