Strange Request
Posted: Thu 13 April, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Right now this will mean very little to anyone, but I need to do a bit of research, and I’ve no idea even where to get started.
So, the question is this :
How are people selected to go on jury duty? I don’t mean “what do you do on jury duty?”, but I actually need to have some basic ideas about how people are selected for a stint on a jury.
Is it random? Is there a method? Computerised? Or some bureaucrat sat in an office with a copy of the electoral roll, and a pen?
Simple, n’est ce pas?
Open a window, throw a brick.
Well that might not be the way it’s done, but it’s the way I’d do it. Or, alternatively, open a copy of the Radio Times, cut out all the cast listings and throw a dart at them. Celebrity jury panel!
I have a colleaugue who worked for the Court about 30 years ago, and at that time it was done by giving the office junior the electoral role and a pencil…. nowadays I think it is computerised. It is supposed to be random. The Home office websire says:
“Jury service
Jury service is an important civil duty that you may be asked to do if you’re aged 18 or over. Around 450,000 people participate in juries every year. Juries are usually used in trials for serious offences like murder or assault. The role of the jury is to consider the evidence and then reach a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’.
Jury selection procedure
A jury is always made up of 12 people from a cross-section of society who’ve been randomly selected from electoral rolls by a computer.
You are eligible for jury service if you’re:
aged 18-70
registered on a parliamentary or local government electoral roll
have lived in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man for at least five consecutive years since you were 13 years old
You may not qualify for jury service if you:
are currently on bail
have ever been sentenced
suffer from mental illness
are a priest or a judge
know the defendant, a witness, the judge, an advocate or solicitor involved in the trial
You are legally required to participate on a jury when summoned. If this simply isn’t possible, you must apply to the Jury Central Summoning Bureau and request either for your jury service to be deferred, or to be excused from jury service altogether. The Jury Central Summoning Bureau can be contacted on 0845 355 5567 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.”
So maybve you should phone and ask them!
When I lived in Scotland, I received a letter towards the end of the year, which said that I might be selected for jury service in the following year. Several other people I know have received these at various times; but I’m the only one who has gone on to receive a jury summons. So, clearly, Scotland has a two-stage process.
(well, three-stage – thirty potential jurors are asked to appear for each case, and fifteen of them are selected by lot – the clerk picks slips of paper from a glass bowl)