Vasiliki Courmouzis, otherwise known as Vicky Pryce and the former wife of disgraced Liberal Democratic bigwig, Chris Huhne, has seen her trial for attempting to pervert the course of justice crumble around her. It seems that the jury or, at least some of them, were unable to understand the judge's instructions and the basic principles of how a jury works.
Exactly what happened in the jury room will probably never be known, but it's obvious from the list of questions that were passed to the judge that there was a shocking breakdown in the system. For a jury to feel it necessary to ask whether or not matters that were not presented in evidence, and for which there was no evidence, could be taken into account in arriving at their verdict is incredible; for them to have asked whether the defendant's religious beliefs, which also were not presented as evidence, could be considered is unbelievable. That they found it necessary to question the meaning of 'reasonable doubt' shows such an appalling lack of understanding of our legal system that one wonders if they were actually British at all.
The truth may be that there was one, perhaps 2, difficult jurors with whom the rest were trying to get to grips. If this is the case, how did these individuals get onto a jury in the first place ? If they were unable to follow the judge's directions or to grasp basic English language, what were they doing there ?
However, given that the jury was unable to reach even a majority verdict, one must assume that the problem went far deeper than 1 or 2 awkward jurors. The conclusion one then has to draw is that this was a particularly dreadful bunch of jurors, poorly educated, quite possibly mostly of recent immigrant origin and wholly unsuited to their task. The implication from this for our present system of justice is quite frightening.
In recent times, governments have made a few noises about the possible introduction of 'juryless trials' for certain particularly difficult, long or sensitive cases. While this would be a nonsense and wholly contrary to centuries of British jurisprudence, one can now, perhaps, see why they may have had such thoughts. If jurors in a simple case can be quite so stupid, how can they possibly be expected to deal with complex frauds, or to sit through months of detailed evidence in other cases such as those involving matters of national security ?
It may be that successive governments have been a little ahead of the rest of us on this particular issue. They, more than anyone else, know just how much our nation has changed in recent years with the vast influx of immigrants, many of whom bring their own culture, customs and language with them while having no desire whatsoever to assimilate ours. Such people are as liable to be called for jury service as anyone else and there must now be large parts of our major cities where there is no one else to be called. The Government also knows, only too well, how general educational standards have collapsed to a point at which huge numbers of younger people have little or no understanding of anything beyond what is needed to achieve the most basic of exam passes, allied with large dollops of left-wing training in subjects dressed up with fancy names, such as 'sociology' or 'PSE'.
Should I be unfortunate enough to be put on trial, I would expect to be tried by a 'jury of my peers' and I would expect this to mean people such as myself, not a ragbag of socialist leaning, semi-literates with no understanding of the British way of life or legal system. Ms Pryce may count herself lucky that the jury in her case couldn't reach a verdict - on another day they may well have had her burned at the stake.
