When the jury service summons landed on my doormat, I cursed my luck. The nag of civic responsibility was just strong enough to stop me trying to wriggle out. Down to the Crown Court I trudged, praying that I wouldn’t be lumbered with – and impoverished by – a six-month trial. Mercifully, the case was done in seven days. But it should have been over long before.
In court, the lunch hour lives up to its name – and then some
Why did it take as much time as it did? It turns out that a day in court is no such thing. Sometimes it’s not even half a day. Three of our seven days began at 10am, two at 10.30am. One day didn’t get going till 11am. Only once were we told to be in court for 9am – on the first day, before the trial had started. When it did, there were more breaks than at the cricket. Barely an hour into each day, the judge let us out for a 15-minute breather. Didn’t the custom of the morning interval end when we left school?
The phrase ‘lunch hour’ lies to us. Most people wolf down a sandwich in ten minutes then get back to work. Not in court, where the lunch hour lives up to its name – and then some. Most days we stopped well before 1pm and didn’t resume till 2pm. On Thursday, the judge rewarded our two-hour morning sitting with an equivalent lunch break. We returned refuelled for a long afternoon in court. Fat chance. Only once did the day stretch to 4.30pm. Otherwise we clocked off before 4pm. The standard working day in Britain is seven-to-eight hours. For many it’s over ten. In court, if you’re a juror at least, you’re unlucky if it’s three or four.
Technical glitches added a flavour of farce. One day the microphone in the witness box broke. ‘Can the jury step out while we fix it?’ Another 20 minutes lost. ‘We’re now going to watch some video evidence on the screen,’ announced the defence barrister. Not so fast, big man. The telly didn’t work. Of course it didn’t. That was the excuse the judge needed to grant us another early lunch. When we returned an hour and-a-half later, he told us not to get too comfortable: the TV was still kaput, so he was sending us home for the day.
What’s the difference between eloquence and concision? A barrister. ‘I apologise for repeating this…’ was uttered in court so often, I couldn’t help but think: are you sorry, or do you just like to go on a bit? There’s a point of justice here too: long and slow proceedings are harder for juries to follow. Nowhere was repetition more soporific than with written character statements. Fourteen mini-essays, all saying the same thing as the character witnesses we’d just heard in the stand. Yet every word from every statement was read aloud. Even a barrister fond of his own voice struggled with this recital, losing his place and mispronouncing his words. In 12 Angry Men, Henry Fonda’s character asks, ‘It’s possible for a lawyer to be just plain stupid, isn’t it?’ In the middle of 14 back-to-back statements, it’s a certainty. A summary would’ve saved us an hour and the barrister’s blushes.
This exhibition in inefficiency was by now comic, a source of eye-rolling and piss-taking among the jurors. The biggest laugh of all came on the third day. After yet another delay, the judge told us not to worry: ‘We’re running ahead of schedule.’ Wow. What does behind schedule look like?
Sir Brian Leveson, the retired High Court judge, suggested last month that one way to save the justice system from collapsing would be to cut the number of trials involving juries. I’m no judge, but I do have a more mundane solution: an eight-hour day in court. By doubling the time for cases each day, the growing backlog would rapidly start to shrink.
My argument isn’t a swipe at the state. If you work in the private sector, you’ll know that time-wasting isn’t the preserve of the public one. But given the crisis in our courts, it’s hardly unreasonable to ask for a little more from them. Trial by jury in Britain has lasted for 800 years. Us jurors can give eight hours to help preserve it.
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