Overview

Every year a quarter of a million people are selected at random from the electoral register for jury service. They are given no training and are forbidden to discuss their verdicts after the trial. Despite the high-profile trials of Louise Woodward and O.J. Simpson, astonishingly little is known about what it's like to serve on a jury: this book is the first to reveal it.

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9780747545583

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Reviews

Every year a quarter of a million people in Britain are selected at random from the electoral register for jury service. If you're over 70, mentally ill, a Member of Parliament or of the clergy, a police officer, lawyer, doctor, dentist, vet or soldier, or you have a criminal record, you can relax, because you're exempt. If not, you can look forward to a fortnight of mind-numbing tedium, rubbing shoulders with people you wouldn't normally sit next to on a bus, marking time by the number of airport novels you've read, discovering the joys of knitting. Or... you could find yourself at the epicentre of a lengthy, high-profile trial, as former Sunday Telegraph editor Trevor Grove did. His account of the four months spent in an Old Bailey courtroom, sorting fact from fiction in a labyrinthine kidnap case involving a Greek shipping magnate and a three million dollar ransom makes the idea of jury service seem almost attractive. As befits a journalist of the old school, his description and assessment of the other jurors, the judge, lawyers, witnesses and, of course, the defendants, is absolutely meticulous, though his idea of what constitutes humour betrays a worrying old fogeyness. Clearly Grove takes his civic duty very seriously indeed, and he mounts a passionate defence of the British jury system with which, in the end, one can only concur. (Kirkus UK)

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