The Jury - Murder Trial

I have watched episode 1 so far. I was on a big Old Bailey murder trial which lasted around six months. I cannot remember any discussions like the ones shown early on in the trial. I can’t precisely remember* if we were told not to do so or just didn’t get into it because we weren’t really all sitting together for ages until the end. Also, no one was talking, gasping or crying whilst in the courtroom.

I got a bit fed up with the jurors TBH. There seemed a fair bit of victim blaming going on, some references to how easy and almost forgivable it was to lose your temper and lash out (despite that not being the definition of loss of control) and some younger jurors desperate to be seen to be sympathetic to the guy. On our jury, the youngest ones were in fact the keenest to find the men guilty, so times have changed there! This may be an unfair summary because I finally decided I couldn’t listen to them any longer and would FF so that I just watched the trial. I shall only watch the actual deliberations and see how they conduct themselves then. Our deliberations took a full week!

*I may be having a false memory, but I rather think we were told not to discuss the case until the end when all the facts were in. Also, we had an usher who kept a pretty close eye on us. One juror harassed another and he was removed!

Yes we had an usher and it was only a minor case. We couldn't talk about the case until it was over. It never was because it was thrown out on a technicality but we were monitored.

Of course it's not real. Character witnesses don't appear from their nice sitting room in a televised interview, they can be cross examined by the barrister.

My main concern is that these people have been selected by the production company who say they drew them out of a hat, but they had to be available and I bet they made sure they had some people with back stories they wanted on the TV. There doesn't seem to be much of a cross section of society in the room does there.

There is a campaign to have jurors with minimum level qualifications for certain trials and I wonder if this is subliminally part of that campaign. 

I’ve been watching this with interest, although I do realise that it is not very accurate in terms of a “true” experience. But of course, they are going from the transcript of the actual trial (or so I understand) so they have to stick to that. I’m sure there is bias among the jurors and their selection, but all the same, I’m quite intrigued by the whole process. I’ve never been called for jury duty and would love to do it.

There are several jurors we haven't heard from at all, perhaps we will tonight.

I think they can now Miranda, they can also ask for support during the trial. Perhaps jury selection is the critical thing here. The people in the programme were selected as they had strong personalities. Initially C4 said they were randomly drawn from a hat, that may be the case but this was after application and several interviews. I have no doubt they have chosen people who have back stories of trauma in their own lives. This could happen on a standard jury but the percentage of people with this would be lower - or conversely it could be all of them. What we haven't seen is any advice from a court usher or any advice from the judge.

I don't want to post spoilers but some of the jury are comparing their own experiences to this one, even when they have no bearing on it at all. Just because a woman/man did you wrong in the past is not a comparison to what happened in this scenario. I have my own conclusion and will let everyone know after the final episode.

Perhaps the judge will explain to them exactly what manslaughter through diminised responsibility actually is, as the barrister on the programme said, it is instant and lasts for several seconds but not several minutes.

Episode 2 told us about the victim's mental health issues and diagnoses and how they affected her. What we mustn't do is say that was cause for him to kill. He knew all about them, he attended health meetings with her, he was fully aware of how they might present. We shouldn't put her on trial for having mental health. That doesn't mean it wasn't difficult and we heard that they had split up already then got back together and married.

The argument was triggered after several weeks of talking about decorating the bathroom. She then took it upon herself to move some of his ornaments into a box. She didn't break them or damage them, but we heard him say they were precious to him and he had collected them over some time and he thought she should have taken more care of them before putting them into the box. That was the trigger. She moved HIS stuff to start decorating. Nobody has explored why that was such a trigger for him. Why couldn't he handle her touching and moving his ornaments in a house they now shared. I was waiting for discussions about this but there were none. I thought it was worthy or more explanation. Did he let her move anything, change anything in the house, was it all his and all precious - what was the dynamic.

Yes it has been explained to us and hopefully will be to the jury that the grounds for manslaughter by diminished responsibility must be a total unusual loss of control and an instantaneous reaction e.g. you grab something immediately at hand and hit someone, you push them and they fall hitting their head, you run them over as they run towards you etc.