Recently in Jury Service Category

I'd hate to have been part of this jury. 5 months into this high profile trial (give or take press restrictions), the jury were sent home. This is the third time the Heathrow robbery has been tried and again it failed to reach a conclusion. The first time it was a defendent's ill health, the second was a hung jury and this was ended in mysterious circumstances. The judge said:

"I don't quite know how to say this, because it is the last thing I wanted to tell, you but I am afraid we are not going to be able to continue with this trial.

"In the course of a major criminal trial like this one, events sometimes occur which create the risk of real injustice or unfairness to one side or the other and sometimes those events are so serious that the trial cannot continue.

"That is what has happened in this case. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to give you any further information about what has occurred."

The rumour is that the prosecution were just closing their case when after some deliberation the trial was halted. The jurors were certainly not best pleased. If our trial were to be stopped there would be outrage after 3 months of hearing the evidence!

I discovered today that my trial has a chance of going beyond the end date of 19th December. This is particularly problematic since I fly out to Hong Kong on the 17th December, as I did tell His Lordship before the trial started.

And I don't call him His Lordship to be pompous, that's really how to address judges. The standard address to a circuit judge in your typical UK criminal court would be "Your Honour" but in the Old Bailey they are one step up and we say "My Lord".

So I have to write a nice little letter to the judge now to plead with him not to cancel my holiday plans! Yes, he does have the power to do that...

References:
It will depend on which How to address a Judge?
Forms of address for the Judiciary

Those who know me personally may be aware that I'm currently on jury service serving at the Central Criminal Court, also known as the "Old Bailey". Being on jury service means you can't talk about your trial at all. Maybe when the trial is over I'll blog about it some day.

I can probably blog about something completely unrelated though. I saw a bunch of kids pass by the court the other day. Lo and behold, it turns out that The Times were reporting on their visit! I won't talk about my experiences but it is interesting to hear about others

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5149502.ece