Cheryl Thomas and the Use of Jury Trail

There is a common misconception among law students, academics and sometimes the public that the use of jury trial is dated, unnecessary and imbalanced. Essentially, the most common preconception is that juries are more often than not unrepresentative of the true population, in particular the under-representation of women, black and minority ethnic groups (BMEs) and young people. Moreover that the average jury usually consists of the unemployed or the retired as many people try to avoid jury service at all costs. Juries are said to lack variety and this is believed to lead to injustices.

The leading expert on juries in the United Kingdom and a professor of law at UCL is Cheryl Thomas. She has produced three papers of particular interest to me on this area of the English Legal System;

• Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System (2007) can be found here
• Exposing the myths of Jury Service (2008) CLR 415 (available via westlaw)
• Are juries fair? (2010) can be found here

Cheryl Thomas is a forerunner for the jury and it is about time we had one! Her studies are original as they are either the first or significantly more recent than any other studies on the role, use and selection of juries. They decipher whether or not the preconceptions outlined above are realities or merely myths. Though her research Thomas has concluded that juries are generally sound and offer a good proportional representation of the population with an equal split of men and women and fair representation of ethnic minority groups. She proves that since the developments brought about by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 in which rights to eligibility were drastically changed middle class professionals very rarely excuse themselves from jury duty whilst it is the retired and underemployed that are mildly underrepresented.

Thomas also researched juries' decisions when dealing with cases concerning an BME to discover if there were actually any inherent prejudicial decisions. This assumption proved false, even in areas such as Winchester where the likelihood of having a predominately white british jury greatly increases (see: Are Juries Fair?).

Finally Thomas looks into the general attitudes of the public towards jury service. Whereas it is easy to assume the response of the public would be negative, surprisingly, according to one survey, 76% of the public consider jury service a duty and are willing to comply, a further 54% said they would even enjoy the experience and only 14% claimed they would not want to take part in jury service through lack of trust in the system and the use of the jury in trials.

Above all it is important to remember that jury trials represent only 1% of criminal proceedings. Further more an even smaller percentage of civil cases as the use of juries in civil trials has been zoned out slowly over the last couple of decades over fears of complexity and time delays. The jury is a tiny part of the legal system in the UK, however, it is an essential part. Cheryl Thomas' studies show that popular misconceptions rest on nothing but inherent and irrelevant fear of injustices and anomalous outcomes.

F.L.P